


Lost and Found

by zaphodsgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean on A Plane Suffering For Love, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge, Dying with Dignity/Assisted Suicide, I Promise It's Not MCD, Immortality, Lisa ships it, M/M, Minor Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Pining Castiel, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2018-12-30 13:55:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 71,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12110181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaphodsgirl/pseuds/zaphodsgirl
Summary: In medieval Ireland, an angel falls in love with a human soul -- but when the angel asks to be sent to Earth as a human he is imprisoned by Heaven instead.Centuries later, banished from the Host and stripped of much of his grace, he walks the world with a single hope: to once again find the soul that he loves.In present day, Castiel meets Dean Winchester and immediately knows that this is the soul he's spent centuries searching for -- except Dean isn't free to be his, and doesn't seem to recognize him at all.Dean feels a distinct pull towards Castiel when they first meet, but doesn't understand it. Unable to resist his curiosity, he and Cas get closer and closer -- but when tragedy strikes, Castiel makes a choice that will likely divide him from his soulmate forever.





	1. Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time in the DCBB for both myself and my artist, [darklightdandelion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darklightdandelion/pseuds/darklightdandelion)!  
> Send my artist lots of love, because I really want them to do more challenges as the work is fantastic! I'm in love with every piece, they're all astounding. I was so lucky to be chosen by them. GREAT JOB DAN!  
> You can view the art masterpost here: [Lost and Found Art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12285798) and be sure to shower it with love!
> 
> This fic was inspired by "The Old Ways" by Loreena McKennitt. I'd been working on another SPN fic, so I had Destiel on the brain when this song came on. The first lyric I quote in this story made me connect it with Cas, and the longing in the song about something that's been lost gave me the original idea.  
> You can listen to that song and others that I used to inspire this work here: [Lost and Found on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/poepourri/playlist/1D88OVpJFjqPYuiA47dEdD%0A)
> 
> Additionally, if you want to view some of the pics I used for inspiration or reference, there are Tumblr posts in the notes at the end of some chapters.
> 
> Thanks to [whichstiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel) for giving me a much, much needed read-through when I started to get discouraged, and always being on hand late at night to give me validation for some new passage.
> 
> Special thanks to [superhoney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/superhoney), who has been there since the very beginning, reading and shaping this like a master crafter. I am indebted to you, Lady Stoneheart.
> 
> Additionally, this fic would never have been realized or completed without the support of the Tropefest family, too large to name, but they know who they are. I love them intensely and without reservation (it's okay, we use protection).  
>  **I dedicate this entire work to all of them, for we are all Jojo.**
> 
> P.S. Happy birthday [Diamond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Diamond)!

“As we cast our gaze on the tumbling sea a vision came o'er me of thundering hooves and beating wings in clouds above.” _\- The Old Ways,_ Loreena McKennitt

***

_County Clare, Ireland, 1534_

It starts with a whisper.

Fintan is pulling the catch from his fishweir as the tide moves out, calculating in his head the price it will fetch from the manor house when he hears the low sound of chatter and turns to check his surroundings. He's so used to the rushing waves and winds buffeting along the cliffs that this particular sound grabs his attention, out of place in what has become background noise.

He checks the shoreline but sees no one, and he stands still for a moment with a net slack in one hand, pondering. It was very much like someone had whispered in his ear, though he couldn't make out the words. He brushes it off and returns to the task at hand, gathering up the catch and making his way toward home where his mother and sister wait patiently for his return.

That night as he sleeps he dreams of a strange being, a figure clothed completely in white light with no distinguishing features. His dream-self sits on the cliffs enjoying the fading warmth of the setting sun, eyes closed, head thrown back as he feels the pressure of the wind against his body -- and when he opens his eyes again he sees it a few feet from him. He's alarmed at first, but at the same time feels drawn to it; whatever it is exudes no malice, though it does not move or speak. When he wakes in the morning he has no real memory of this figure, but he has a feeling for the rest of the day that he's forgetting something, and again that day he swears he hears a whisper in his ear.

The figure comes to him again the next night, and the night after, and each time it says and does nothing while Fintan's dream-self peers at it curiously, wondering at its purpose. 

It takes a week for him to gather the courage to speak to it.

"What do you want?" he says, more curious than accusatory, and the being's light pulses brighter for a second, as though surprised and pleased. It doesn't answer, instead slowly moving closer as if to gauge whether or not Fintan is afraid, but he doesn't feel threatened. After all, it's only a dream. "You can come closer if you wish," he says, and the light flares again with what Fintan thinks is happiness. He can't help but smile as it moves closer still, now just a foot away from him. He's at a loss for what to do, so he just turns back to the sunset, content in the company this being affords him as he dreams.

He remembers the being when he wakes now, mulling it over in his head as he interacts with others in the village, as his mother and Graine ask him questions about the catch, as he stands on the cliffs in the waking world and gazes out at the sea. 

"My name is Fintan," he says to it one night as it hovers near, never touching him but always close enough to do so, and it pulses with acknowledgement. "Will you ever tell me your name?" It shrinks away from him slightly, its light dimming a bit, as if it's taken aback by his question. "I'm sorry," he says quickly. "I just...I would know you, if you wish."

The figure stays unmoving, pondering, and Fintan has given up on hearing a response when there's a whisper in his ear, much like the one he first heard that day at the fishweir and multiple times since, except now he can make out the words, delivered with a shuddering breath.

"My name...is Cassiel," it says, and then vanishes. Fintan is a little surprised, for that's never happened before, but as his mind moves into consciousness in the early morning light he tastes the syllables on his tongue for the first time.

"Cassiel."

He keeps these dream visits to himself, worried about what others might say. Perhaps he's going mad, though he feels far from it, and that night he's so eager that it takes longer for him to finally get to sleep.

Cassiel does not appear that night, nor the next, and Fintan frets even during his waking hours.

On the third night he calls out the creature's name, shouting it off the dream cliffs only for it to be stolen by the wind. He sits heavily on the ground, unsure of what to do and missing something without understanding why.

"I am here," a voice whispers, and Fintan turns toward it with surprise and relief.

"Where did you go?" he spits out, trying not to let anger bleed into his voice and failing. Cassiel's light dims, backing away slightly.

"I should not...I should not be here," it says. "I should never have come."

"Well, you're already here. I want you to stay." The lights wavers, unsure. " _Please_. It's just...I've grown used to your companionship." Cassiel comes slightly closer. 

"Are you lacking in companionship?" It says, sounding curious, and Fintan relaxes.

"I have my mother and my sister to care for, and I get on well with the other villagers. But there's no one that I'm close to. That I can speak with about the matters on my mind." He looks askance at the being beside him. "I would speak with you, since you're already here. If you would stay." 

"I would...I would like that," it whispers, and something jogs Fintan's memory, even in his sleep.

"Do you watch me in the waking world, Cassiel?" he asks lightly, not wanting it to sound like an accusation, then moving on before he gets an answer. "Sometimes I think I hear a voice whispering in my ear, but there's never anyone there."

"You can hear me?" Cassiel asks, their voice now full of wonder. "Your human ears should not be able to hear me."

So Cassiel _has_ been watching him, and is definitely not human. He knows now the creature invading his dreams, though he's careful not to let on. One should never trust the Aes Sídhe, but they should always be treated with kindness and respect so as not to provoke their ire. Even so, he feels a kind of strange comfort with this elven creature, Cassiel, and so he keeps his newfound knowledge to himself.

"You should talk to me sometimes when you see that I'm alone. I would not mind the sound of your voice during the day."

Cassiel never takes form on the physical plane either, but sometimes when Fintan is pulling in his catch, or he's escaped to his favorite spot on the cliffs, Cassiel will speak to him. For all that he appears in his dreams as a being of light, in the waking world he takes the form of shadows, and sometimes Fintan can feel them moving against his skin like the semblance of touch.

As time passes, Fintan forgets to act with caution. Cassiel is an earnest and sweet creature, and Fintan learns a lot about their nature even if there are no specifics. For instance, he's not sure if Cassiel is male or female, though over time he begins to think of them as male. Maybe it's a reaction to always being around his mother and sister, to not being close to any of the other menfolk, but whatever the reason Cassiel, to him, becomes a man. He spends even his waking hours thinking about him, going over all the things they've discussed, daydreaming about his nights as he pulls the catch in from the fishweir day after day. 

His mother and Graine catch him sometimes staring off into space, their voices full of concern, but he only laughs and teases Graine that he's dreaming about the day he's finally married her off to another man who'll take care of her, and she'll stomp her foot and pull at his hair until she forgets what they were talking about. 

"You're a great one to talk about weddings and whatnot, Fintan. You should perhaps be thinking of one of your own, take a good woman to wife and make yourself respectable for a change," she says one day before she storms off in a huff, and Fintan sits in stunned silence as he ponders what she's said. He's twenty-two now, has been providing for Graine and their mother ever since his father passed six years ago, not really thinking much about what he wants for his own future -- only about how to get through the next day, and the next, to take care of his family and make sure they're content. There was a time when he was younger that he entertained such thoughts, but he hasn't for some time now. He can't even remember the last time he flirted with the maids up at the manor house. 

Not since he'd begun to dream of Cassiel in earnest, he realizes. Two years now, at least. 

He thinks he must be going mad. 

That night as he dreams, he considers the creature Cassiel, and realizes he has fallen in love. With a fae. 

"Cassiel," he says abruptly, interrupting whatever he'd been talking about, which Fintan certainly wasn't listening to as he pondered his own thoughts. "Do you...have you come to care for me at all?" He holds his breath, not even knowing what to expect for an answer. Cassiel's form, now more human-shaped than it had been at first, flutters in and out of brightness, as if his thoughts are racing.

"Yes," he finally says. "Of course I care for you deeply, Fintan."

"Do you _love_ me, Cassiel? As a...as a husband and wife love one another?" He turns away as he asks, unwilling to see the way Cassiel's form gives him away, not sure if he wants to know the answer now that his tongue has run away with him. "It's only that Graine asked me today when I planned to find a wife, and it occurred to me that I wasn't looking for one. I've not thought about it. Not for some time. It gave me pause." He pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them, resting his head on them even as he turns his face away, knowing full well Cassiel can hear him perfectly even so. "Why haven't I been seeking someone of my own to love, out in the waking world? Isn't that what people do?"

Still nothing but silence. Fintan can think of nothing else to say, and thinks maybe Cassiel is no longer there, has disappeared from the dream as he did so long ago, when he finally hears him answer.

"I do," Cassiel says, and Fintan turns with a start. "I'm not supposed to, but I do. I am sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" 

"I do not mean to make you uncomfortable."

"Is that what you think I am?" he asks, staring off into the distance, as though the vast expanse of dream sky holds the answer. "I'm only uncomfortable with the knowledge that the one I love cannot take physical form to be with me." 

Cassiel's light flares so brightly in the corner of his eye that he has to hold up a hand to shield his face, and also to hide the growing blush spreading across his cheeks.

"Is that what you would wish, beloved?" Cassiel cannot seem to hide his excitement and joy, but Fintan knows he cannot have what he wants. Not yet. 

"Perhaps, when my sister is married and my mother cared for in her new home, I can think about the life I want for myself." It's a promise as well as a request, he realizes, putting down his hand, and Cassiel's light is the brightest it has ever been.

*******

Fintan makes his way to the top of the cliffs in the dark as only one born and raised on this land can. There is no moon tonight, but he is just as sure-footed and swift as though it were midday, barely held back by the strong wind buffeting him from the sea. His eagerness does not overcome his caution, for though he knows his way the cliffs of Clare are still treacherous, and he is no fool. 

A little mad, perhaps, to be meeting his fae lover on a cliff in the night, but no fool.

Reaching the spot of their assignation, he sits huddled in the dark, waiting, until he hears the familiar voice.

"Hello, Fintan. I've missed you _,"_ say the shadows, drawing closer and wrapping themselves around him. 

"You're with me every night, Cassiel," he laughs at first, then turns somber, "but it's true that I miss you as well. The days are hard when I wish only for the night so that I may be with you.""

"I know, beloved. I wish to be with you always."

Fintan swallows, for the time has finally come for him to ask for what he wants. He knows that humans who go the home of the Aes Sídhe are never seen again, though legend says that time moves differently there, so perhaps if they ever return there is no one left to know. Even so, it is a trip he intends never to come back from, and so he has not yet asked Cassiel to take him to his home. He doesn’t even know much of it, for Cassiel is always reluctant to talk about it, saying it is best for Fintan if he does not know. He knows Cassiel has a large family with many brothers, and that they are soldiers, but that is all.

Now, though, the time has come for a change. He's been working hard to take care of things at home so that the ones he loves will be cared for after he's gone. He's made a fine match for his little sister, Graine, and she'll be wed within the month. Their mother will go to live with her to keep house and take care of the children when they came, and Fintan will be on his own. He clears his throat before he can speak again.

"Cassiel. It will be possible soon for us to always be together. That is, if you still wish it." He hangs his head bashfully, for even though he is sure of his own feelings he can’t help but doubt after all this time. There is no answer, but the shadows draw more closely about him, as though they are listening, and so he continues. "By the time the new moon rises I'll be alone, and all my family safe in their new home with Graine's husband. There will be nothing truly keeping me bound here. I want to go with you, to your home. To stay with you, forever." He waits, full of trepidation, wrapping his arms about his bent knees and hiding his face in them.

"Oh, beloved. Would you truly make this sacrifice to be with me?" Fintan doesn’t lift his head but nods, and his response is muffled, but Cassiel can hear the affirmative just the same. "I wish I could grant you this, but it's not possible for you to come with me."

"Are we never to be more than we are, then? I don't think I could bear it, Cassiel."

The shadows pulse, and Fintan despairs. A year ago he'd been hopeful that this was all he need ask for, since Cassiel could not take physical form in this realm for some reason. Has he changed his mind?

"I'm sorry," he says, when the shadows still don’t answer. "I love you, Cassiel. I just want to be where you are. I want to be able to touch your face. I want to dance with you at Graine's wedding." It seems like such a small thing to want. 

"No, no, Fintan, please. Do not be sorry. I love you. There is nothing I want more than to be with you," the shadows flutter, echoing the despair in the voice that emerges from them. "It's just...it is more difficult than you know. I cannot bring you to my home, and there are reasons I cannot come to yours."The shadows seem to sag in sorrow now."I never wished to cause you pain. I should never have come to you. I never expected it would lead to this."

"I do not think we should continue to meet," says Fintan as steadily as he can, though every word that leaves his lips causes a stabbing pain in his heart. "There is nothing in this for either of us but pain. If I cannot live a normal life the village will think I've gone mad, and I can't pretend to do that whilst I love you." He stands, turning to leave without another word. He knows there is nothing more he can say.

"Wait! There is something...there may be a way. Not for you to join me, but for me to join you."Fintan turns back, silent but attentive. "I must go and consult with my brethren, but there is a way that I can come to you. That we can be whole, together, and live out our life here. Would that suffice for you?"

Fintan closes his eyes with a whispered yes. 

"Wait for me, then, beloved. I will come to you in time, I promise."

"Aye, Cassiel. I will."

*******

Cassiel leaves the cliffs in a tumultuous state of mind, angry with himself for letting things get this far, for being unable to leave Fintan alone. 

He'd seen him first from a great distance, a soul alone on the coastal shore, so struck by its radiant brightness that he had to come closer. He'd stood, unseen, just watching, marveling at this solitary human as he worked his fishing nets while humming to himself. He had reddish blonde hair, pale skin and freckles, typical of the humans in this region of the world, his eyes a verdant green to match the land he came from. Cassiel drew closer, watching the muscles of his arms as he worked, trying to determine what made him special, what made his soul _glow._

"Your soul is _beautiful_ ," he'd said aloud, forgetting himself for a moment, and the human had looked up. Cassiel stilled as Fintan looked around, puzzled as he found himself alone.

 _Can he hear me?_ thought Cassiel. _Can he hear my true voice_?

He had to learn more about this human, needed to know what made him shine so bright. That night was the first time he'd intruded on Fintan's dreams, meaning only to quell his fascination and never come back again. Instead he found himself more powerfully drawn to him, until he craved Fintan's company like plants crave sunlight. He hadn't been able to understand what he was feeling at first, or even that he _was_ feeling. Emotions were an alien concept to him, as they were to all his kind. At first Cassiel wondered why he was different, worried about what was happening to him...and then he no longer cared.

Fintan has brought feeling into his existence, and it is terrifying and unpredictable and satisfying all at once. He's often wondered at the human concept of love, wondered what about it could shape human destiny so. He doesn’t wonder anymore, for it infuses so much of him now that he’s going to change the course of his own existence in pursuit of it.

He knows that Fintan thinks he is fae, and it seems easier to let him believe so -- but Cassiel is an angel, a member of the host, a soldier of Heaven. It’s been easier to let the misconception stand than to try to explain his true nature; it isn’t so far from the truth as to be an utter lie, in any case. It makes sense that Fintan thinks there is a place that he and Cassiel can actually be together, but in truth it’s not possible -- Fintan can only come to Heaven when his life is extinguished. Cassiel is a soldier with an endless mission, not allowed a place in Heaven such as Fintan will someday know. He should have explained, but it is dangerous for Fintan to know the truth. Cassiel chastises himself again for ever succumbing to such weakness, and not having the strength to stay away.

He can take a human vessel to be with his beloved, but feels that he would be robbing another of their life while using their body for his own desires. Then, too, his angelic grace will keep his host preserved as long as he inhabits it, so that Fintan grows old while Cassiel's vessel remains youthful, and the thought of that makes him despair. He wishes he could elevate his lover and be with him forever, but that can never be. Instead, Cassiel intends to take a different course of action.

He will go before the council and ask to be sent to Earth as a human instead, transmuting his grace for a human soul of his own, a mortal form. He will grow old with his love, and at the end they will pass into eternity together, forever. 

Normally Cassiel and all his brethren can communicate to each other with mere thought, but he is careful whenever he goes to Earth to cut off that communication. He opens himself back up now, and respectfully asks his elders if he can speak with them, receiving affirmation that he should meet them in their chamber. 

The council chamber of the archangels is a large open space where all their brothers and sisters convene together, receiving orders and guidance from those who communicate directly with their Father. There are seven of them, and their leader is Michael -- a great and powerful archangel, usually dour, though he is considered thoughtful and fair-minded. It is to Michael that Cassiel will speak directly, and then the whole council will discuss his case. No one has ever made a request such as this before, but Cassiel does not fear. He is not asking to make a human into an angel after all, merely to no longer be one himself. He is one of thousands, surely there is no reason to refuse him.

"Brother," Michael intones as Cassiel finally stands before him, "for what reason do you request our audience?"

Cassiel stands straight and makes eye contact only with Michael. 

"I wish to be relieved of my duties from the host, and be sent to Earth as a human."

There is a collective gasp from the other angels in the assembly chamber, and though the rest of the council look surprised Michael's face remained impassive.

"For what reason do you ask this of us?"

Cassiel pauses to take a deep breath before he answers.

"Our Father has given me a great gift, Michael, for I have grown to love one of humankind."

"I believe Our Father decreed that we should love _all_ of humanity, Cassiel."

"Yes, yes I know. I do. However, there is one that I cherish above all others, in a way different than the rest. It seems as though I am destined to become one with this human." He keeps his voice steady, because he knows passion, or rather all emotion, is frowned upon by his brethren. "I feel a strong connection with this one, my brother, as though we were made for one another."

"Do you mean to say you are soulmates, Cassiel?" This from Uriel, who sits at the far left, but Cassiel never takes his eyes from Michael even as he answers.

"Yes."

Now the din from the rest of the host is deafening as they chatter wildly among themselves, but Cassiel stands stoic and sure until Michael finally speaks again, and all fall quiet to hear.

"You needs possess a soul to be a soulmate, Cassiel, and you do not. It is not possible for you to have a true connection to a human. That is not what we are for."

"Perhaps we were not intended to, but I believe I have changed. The light I feel from this human soul...it's transformed me, Michael. I feel I have been blessed by God, and that it would be wrong to ignore the path I have been set upon. Surely there is a precedence to exchange one's grace for humanity?"

Michael's expression changes at that, but Cassiel cannot determine what it is. He waits patiently, knowing that the archangels are silently discussing his proposal amongst themselves, their thoughts hidden from everyone else. He busies himself with planning for his future, the unseen future he will find on Earth. Fintan is a fisherman, and Cassiel wonders if he will teach him so they can work side by side, building their life together, never to part. So it will be until the end of their days, and then their souls will reunite in Heaven for all eternity. He imagines what Fintan’s Heaven will look like, and cannot help but smile to himself. He wonders, too, why God had seen fit to bless him with this gift -- but it is not his place to question, even if he were given the occasion to ask Him. 

Finally, there is movement at the council table and Cassiel gives it his full attention once again.

"Cassiel. We have determined that you have wandered down the wrong path. It is frowned upon to seek congress with humans for reasons you well know, but to overstep even that behavior and believe yourself in love with one of them indicates to us that you are greatly flawed. We have decided that you will be subjected to reconditioning to set you back onto the correct path." Cassiel cannot believe what he is hearing, and so cannot restrain himself.

" _No_! I refuse! I am _not_ broken!"

Shocked murmurs echo through the hall that an angel would ever raise their voice, much less address the Council of Archangels in such a manner.

"It is your place to follow orders, Cassiel, not to question them," says Raphael, "but since you currently lack that skill, perhaps you need some time to consider what the response befitting a true angel would be."

"Yes," Uriel chimes in, "and two hundred years should be more than sufficient. By then, your human and their children and even their grandchildren will be long dead, to remove all temptation from you if you still fail to see the light." 

Cassiel feels himself grabbed by more angels than he can count, and no amount of fighting and screaming throws them off him for long. 

Thus he is transported into a lonely cell, so far removed from the rest of the host that none can hear him screaming.


	2. Waiting

"And it will take this life of regret for my heart to learn to forget." – _She is the Sunlight_ , Trading Yesterday 

***

At first Fintan waits eagerly, and though days pass with no word from Cassiel, he does not worry. Family can be difficult, and he knows not how many brothers Cassiel has to convince. He misses him terribly, is lonely without his presence, but is sure arrangements of some kind are being made, and his heart fills with hope that finally they will be together.

Several weeks pass as he goes through his daily routines, the hours filled with idle daydreams, the nights strangely empty. Gone are the whispers keeping him company throughout the day, the embrace of the shadows when they meet on the cliffs, the bright pulse of warmth from Cassiel in his dreams. Never before has he stayed away for so long. He wonders if some of Cassiel's family are resistant, are arguing against the obstacles, are refusing to let them be together. 

He replays their last conversation over and over in his mind, seeking comfort in the smallest inflection.

 _There **may** be a way, _Cassiel had said first, but just after: _there **is** a way_. Definitive. Sure. 

Fintan endeavors not to despair, but by the time he gives Graine's hand in marriage, doubt has found a foothold in his heart. He spends the entire day in a state of anticipation, because surely Cassiel will come, and he has one eye on the festivities and the other on the fringes of the celebration, searching for any sign of a stranger. Guests begin to leave, and with each of them a shred of hope, until Fintan is left alone on the green, never having danced.

Perhaps Cassiel's brothers find him unworthy, as if they expected him to be extraordinary and find him wanting instead. Perhaps they have convinced Cassiel of the same? No. No, Cassiel had three years with Fintan, certainly he would trust his own assessment over theirs.

_Wait for me, then, beloved._

Cassiel has never lied to him, has never promised anything he couldn't give. Fintan surrenders himself to the persistence of memory, using it to bolster his courage and find the strength to wait. 

A year passes.

Graine gives birth to a handsome baby boy, and for a time Fintan is distracted as he holds his new nephew, but soon enough his heart aches, the edges of the hole in it tender and raw. Every night he climbs the cliffs, staring out at the sea, and waits.

Another year passes.

Fintan grows introspective and distant, and his mother worries that he's lonely. She's more right than she understands, but he doesn't know how to explain that it's not because she and Graine have left him alone. She pleads with him to find a lovely girl to marry, one who will care for him and then for their family, should they be so blessed. He smiles each time, tells her he might with a smile, because he doesn't know how to explain that he's already given away his heart and now it's missing. He sits on the cliffs for hours and waits for the shadows to embrace him again.

Graine has another boy.

Fintan hardly goes to visit anymore, finding it too difficult to pretend he hasn't lost something. Whenever he isn't involved in his labor he shuts himself inside his empty home, still waiting for someone who doesn't come. He barely acknowledges the other villagers, and doesn't visit his nephews unless there's a holiday or a birthday. His mother and sister show up unannounced every so often to fuss over him, but he never responds favorably despite their attentions and so eventually they stop.

Graine's next child is girl, and the shadows are still dormant.

Five years have passed since Fintan's lover left him alone and never came back. At times he's resentful, angry at his abandonment and cursing himself for ever trusting a fae, for believing one could truly love him. Then he'll move past this into abject sadness, thinking he must have so little worth, that he can be tossed aside so cruelly. Outside of these moods he is listless and numb, knowing he should move on, that he should forget about Cassiel and find comfort in another.

He does neither, but he stops going up to the cliffs.

After Graine's fourth child (another boy, much to her chagrin), Fintan begins to exhibit signs of life again. He's not the same as he was ten years before but he makes an effort: to talk to others, to see his family, to bounce his tow-headed niece upon his knee as her brothers chase each other about the yard and their grandmother cooks supper while Graine nurses her newborn. He puts on a brave face and plays pretend with more than just the children.

His mother and Graine question him sometimes, try to get to the root of his sorrow, but he always demurs. At night he goes home and lies in bed, alone as always, and loses himself to memory before he slips into dreams that are always empty now, void of the light that once made them warm and full of promise.

_Wait for me, then, beloved._

Fintan waits as the years pass and his body shows its age, his gnarled hands having ever more difficulty with the nets at the fishweir as he teaches his nephews the craft. He spends the evenings alone in his little house, doted on by his niece. She seems to understand him intrinsically, but she never prods him to explain himself or talk to her about what ails him. She just makes sure he eats, makes new slippers when his are worn, presses a kiss into his temple every evening as she leaves, the curls of her long blonde hair twisting in the wind as she makes her way back home through the long grass.

He stands in the doorway one evening and watches her go, eyes drawn to the cliffs that he abandoned years before. It's not a conscious choice that drives him, and it takes a long time to force his withered body up the old paths, more careful now at his advanced age than he'd ever been in his youth, if only from necessity. He stands at the edge, staring off at the expanse of the ocean, closing his eyes against the wind and listening to it roar. It reminds him of whispers, and he wonders, not for the first time, if he'd imagined it all.

"Cassiel!" he screams into the night, and the wind tears the word from his mouth and flings it into the sea even as it dries the moisture that leaks from his eyes.

Fintan lies in the grass and closes his eyes, falling asleep to the sound of wind like beating wings. For the first time in many years -- and now the last time -- he dreams again of the bright being that once loved him, of Cassiel, embracing him as a shadow on this very cliff.

_I will come to you in time, I promise._

It was a promise that would take lifetimes upon lifetimes for Cassiel to keep, because for Fintan, this one was over.

*******

For the first ten years of his imprisonment, Cassiel rages. He flings himself against the unyielding bars of his prison, his celestial form unable to breach any crevice, screaming in anger and frustration and loss to which all of Heaven is deaf. When he grows tired of that he sits in the corner, huddling in the solitary embrace of his own wings, howling his pain.

No one comes to release him.

The next ten years see him restlessly pacing in his cell, back and forth in its tiny confines, muttering softly until he's worked himself into a lather and starts pounding on the bars once again.

No one comes to release him.

Cassiel begins to wish he'd never learned what love was, because now he also knows suffering and despair and hopelessness.

Another decade passes, and then another, and then another still, and he knows that by now Fintan will have died, thinking to his last breath that he has been abandoned, and the injustice of this makes Cassiel scream.

Even so, no one ever comes to release him.

So pass another fifty years, and Cassiel doesn't even change positions anymore from where he's finally curled up into a ball on the floor, heart heavy and mind gone numb with pain. 

It will be a hundred years still before he sees another angel, and by then he's forgotten the sound of his own voice, though he recognizes that of his visitor immediately.

"Can you hear me, brother?" Gabriel says, whispering through the bars. It's unlike him to be careful and quiet, but even so Cassiel flinches a little, so foreign is any sound in this place where he's been hidden away for centuries. "Your imprisonment is over and you're to go before the council." He does not move, only curling into himself more tightly. "I am sorry, Cassiel. Many of us were unhappy with your situation. You must know this."

Cassiel feels his entire being fill with undiluted fury, finally rising to his feet and fixing Gabriel with a glare that makes the archangel take a step back. "Your _unhappiness_ about my situation did not seem to help me in any way." 

"I know." Gabriel stares back, refusing to break away. All of Heaven understands the importance of following orders, and no angel will defy them and face Cassiel's fate. They cannot be moved by pity, for none of them feel any; they are automatons at best, and there are none in the entire host who can be moved by anything resembling emotion. None but Cassiel. In this, he has always been alone.

He shakes out his wings, stretching them as best he can in his confined space before stepping up to the bars.

"I'm ready," he says at last, and Gabriel releases him.

They walk through the long, winding corridors toward the council room: Cassiel with his head up, wings pulled back, head straight and staring at a fixed point in front of him with Gabriel at his side keeping pace. He does not know how long their journey takes them, having long since lost any sense of time; but finally they enter the chamber, all seven chairs on the dais occupied but for one on the far end. Gabriel motions for Cassiel to stand in the center before them, and then takes the empty chair.

Behind him, Cassiel can hear the murmur of all the assembled host but he ignores them all, instead taking the time to let his eyes fall once again upon the archangels who imprisoned him so long ago before fixing upon Michael in the center, gazing dispassionately back at him.

"Cassiel. Your time of reflection is over, and so you are released. Have you come to realize the gravity of your sin, so that you may rejoin the host?"

The entire hall goes silent, and of the seven only Gabriel fidgets slightly while waiting for an answer. When Cassiel finally speaks, his voice rings through the entire chamber.

"I committed no sin."

There is a collective gasp of thousands behind him, but Cassiel stands stoic and unrepentant while Michael sighs and shakes his head.

"If you cannot see the error of your ways, you will be unsuitable to return until you have been reconditioned."

"Then do not return me." At this the hall erupts, and several of his judges begin to raise their voices and gesture wildly at him, Raphael looking incredulous and Gabriel shocked. Cassiel raises his voice to be heard above the din. 

"I am not one of you, as you have amply shown. I cannot be remolded by force, for I am as our father made me." Raphael looks murderous at such blasphemy. "I cannot be fixed, as I am not broken, but as such I can no longer be among you."

"Do you try to manipulate us into letting you have your wish to live as a human?" spits Raphael. "Your lover is long dead, Cassiel, and generations after him. Was that merely a means to an end that you now seek to trick us into granting you?" 

"Making me human serves no purpose now. My lover is dead, as you so generously pointed out. I only ever wanted to be with him. Banish me to his heaven, then, and leave me be, for I will never be one of you again."

Michael levels a hard glare at Cassiel, who doesn't respond but stares calmly in return. The archangel leans back in his chair, fingers steepled before him, thoughtful and quiet for some time before he speaks.

"Be silent." 

His voice, loud enough to carry, commands instant obedience. 

"I do not wish to add a fractured angel back into our ranks. Even after conditioning, I do not feel this one can ever be trusted -- but I don't see fit to reward his aberrant behavior with his greatest desire. So it is I make my judgement." 

He stands up from his chair, towering above all on the dais, and briefly closes his eyes before he speaks again. 

"You will be cast out of Heaven to make a place for yourself on Earth -- but you will not be human. You will be cut off from the host, and as such your powers will be very limited, but you will still be an angel. That is how you were made, and so you will stay, living the rest of your existence among the humans but never to be one of them. Henceforth, you shall be known as Castiel -- he whom we have cast out and shunned."

*******

Michael's judgement is as swift as it is cruel, and as all the angels leave the council chamber Castiel feels himself being ushered in a different direction with a firm grip, taken swiftly to the gates. The steely resolve has melted from his spine, grudging acceptance taking its place. He would rather any home than the one that has treated him so cruelly, and nothing can be as desperate as the last two hundred years spent in utter solitude. 

"Castiel." He looks up, startled, for he had not realized it was Gabriel escorting him to his banishment, though he should have known. He's holding Castiel by his shoulders, shaking him slightly, trying to catch his focus. "Castiel!" 

_That's my name now,_ he thinks uselessly, looking Gabriel in the eyes.

"I never wanted this for you, little brother. I wanted you to be with us, to be whole. I wish this had never happened."

"Be careful, Gabriel. Your voice holds regret that could be construed as _feelings_ , and those are expressly forbidden." A shocked look crosses Gabriel's face, but he quickly replaces it with an expression of determination. 

"You must listen to me, Castiel, for we haven't much time. You must not lose hope. No, don't shake your head at me. _Listen._ Your human, did he truly love you? It's important." The look in Castiel's eyes is enough of an answer. "You must search for him, Castiel. The human soul is immortal, and even now he could be down on earth in another form, waiting for you. Finding him will release you from your torment."

"How? How can that be?" Gabriel looks abashed before he answers.

"Though we do not have souls, Castiel, his called out to you for some reason. If you are the mate his soul craves then it will never truly love another. If you find it again, and it loves you still, there's hope for you -- for you will no longer be bound with the chains of Heaven, and your Grace can be transformed..."

"...into a human soul," Castiel whispers in awe. "How can this be?" 

But there is no time left for Gabriel to explain, so he kisses Castiel softly on the forehead while reaching around behind him, and suddenly all he knows is pain.

The last thing Castiel sees of his home is Gabriel standing at the edge, holding Castiel's severed wings as he plummets to earth with a fiery scream. 


	3. Understanding

"You wear guilt like shackles on your feet, like a halo in reverse." – _Halo_ , Depeche Mode

***

**__** _Somewhere in Heaven, 1748_

Gabriel finds himself standing in a parcel of Heaven that he has no cause to be in, but can't resist the urge to visit. It's not that there is anything particularly compelling about the place, for there are an infinite number of others like it; but he feels a compulsion to understand, somehow, what happened to his brother. What affected him so greatly that it set him on the path to condemnation and banishment? It's a question that has plagued Gabriel for at least a decade, and the key to it is here, somewhere.

He stands on the cliffs, observing but unseen, buffeted from behind by the strong winds of the sea, watching the long grasses along the hills undulating like an ocean of their own.. In the distance he can see a small dwelling with a thatched roof atop low walls, smoke curling happily out of the top. He moves toward it, taking his time as he descends the hill from the cliffs, rather enjoying the atmosphere of this place for all that it is nought but blue and green as far as the eye can see. The sound of waves crashing on the rocks behind him fades the closer he gets to the house, but there is still the gentle music of the wind following him, much like the steady hum of the angelic host that is always in his head. 

The grasses give way to a clear area as he approaches, and beyond it he spots two figures walking in the distance, holding hands. 

He frowns to himself. 

His brother lost everything for the love of this human soul, but apparently there is another keeping him company in Heaven, and it makes Gabriel feel out of sorts. This has been happening to him a great deal, ever since meting out Michael's punishment on Cassiel. Before, really, if he's being honest with himself, but he'd always managed to quell the sensation and put it out of his mind. After what happened to Cassiel he seems to have lost the ability to do so, or maybe the will. 

He is feeling _something_ more and more these days -- maybe only a little, not enough to act as rashly as his banished sibling, but _something_. He stops pushing it away because he needs to understand, and he supposes that's a feeling in and of itself, the desire to empathize with his brother's plight. Now, seeing the two figures in the distance, another feeling gently brushes against his psyche and he lets it have free reign. It seems to be...anger.

He moves closer, discerning that the figures are men, and reconsiders. This is essentially a reproduction of medieval Ireland from two hundred years prior, a Catholic nation, and he wonders at the figures before him. Can it be that after Cassiel didn't return, Fintan managed to love another? To love a man during that time... it almost saddens Gabriel to think that perhaps all of Fintan's life was one unrequited affection after another, because he can't imagine anyone acting on it during Fintan's lifetime. Humans are so very strange with their ideas about what is permissible with bodily passions. 

One of the figures in the distance has dark, tousled hair and the other is a red-blonde, both of them deeply tanned by the sun. They are definitely holding hands, and if he'd entertained for a moment that perhaps one was just leading the other through the grass, that thought is dispelled when the blonde turns abruptly to kiss his companion passionately. How very... _progressive_.

"Fintan," the dark-haired man whispers, leaning their foreheads together as he clasps his hands around his companion's neck. So. He knows whose Heaven this is now, and which of these two he's going to have words with. 

He makes himself visible to them both in his true form, and though it's a greatly reduced version he still towers above them both. Fintan reacts first, stepping in front of his companion and raising his arms to his sides like a shield.

"Stay behind me, Cassiel!" he shouts, and Gabriel freezes.

"What?" he says, his true voice booming across the vast grasslands before he can restrain himself. Fintan can't be hurt by it in this realm, but Gabriel realizes how intimidating he must be at the moment, so he reduces his form even further and modulates his voice before he speaks again. 

"What did you call him?" he asks again, incredulously. The dark-haired man places his hand on Fintan's shoulder, moving to stand beside him as his arms come down to his sides.

"I am Cassiel," he responds, looking Gabriel in the eye. "What does the archangel Gabriel wish of us?" 

He blinks at the two figures before him, trying to process what he's seeing. 'Cassiel' is merely a construct of this place, something created out of Fintan's own desires, and that's why it knows just what Gabriel is. The form is a shock nonetheless, but he tries to mask that as he addresses it directly.

"If I may, I would like to talk to you a while." He hesitates, not even sure himself of what he wants. "I just...I have questions to ask of you, Fintan. You and your...companion. If you will give me your time." 

"Of course!" Fintan smiles, immediately relaxing, and Cassiel follows suit. "Come into the house! We shall sit and talk while we eat," he says enthusiastically, pulling his lover into step next to him.

"I think I might also need a very, very strong drink," Gabriel mutters to himself as he follows, allowing his form to solidify further as they go.

There is a pleasant fire inside, and the archangel actually declines the offer of refreshment, choosing instead to observe the way the two interact as they prepare their meal and cozy up to eat. The way Fintan looks at Cassiel tells him much, but there's so much more he needs to know. He freezes the scene before him with a snap of his fingers, all of it but the representation of his brother, who puts his bowl aside and gives Gabriel his full attention. 

"Tell me how you came to be," he instructs him. "I knew the real Cassiel, and this is not the form I remember. How came you to look this way?" 

The man looks at Fintan, frozen beside him, and reaches out a hand to brush back a lock of his hair. 

"In life, Fintan was only ever able to see Cassiel in dreams, and even then he never knew..." he falters a bit, unsure of how to go on. 

"How Cassiel actually appeared?" 

"Yes, exactly that. He thought his beloved was a fae, you see, who couldn't appear to him in the physical plane. The real Cassiel visited him in dreams as a being of light, a smaller version of his true form, much as you are now. In the waking world he only ever appeared to him as shadow, though they spoke to one another."

"He _spoke?_ My brother spoke to Fintan? With his true voice?"

"Yes," this version of Cassiel nods firmly. "It started with a whisper, and Fintan thought it only his imagination, a trick of the wind." 

A human who can hear an angel's true voice, without the mouthpiece of a vessel, is a rare being indeed. Even so, Gabriel is still baffled.

"Did he not move on when Cassiel did not return? Find a wife, have a family?" 

"No, never. His sister had children, and he doted on them, and their children -- but for himself, there was only one thing he ever wanted, and for that he waited patiently for nearly forty years."

"But it never came," Gabriel whispered, pondering how lonely such a length of time must feel to a human soul.

"No, it never did." Cassiel shifted slightly, hugging himself before he continued. "Even here he waited for some time, because so much sorrow and doubt had built up in him on Earth that he couldn't bring himself to hope. It was many years before I appeared here, and many more still before I assumed this form, which I've had now for some time."

"Your form does surprise me, I'll admit," he says, head shaking in disbelief while he looks at Fintan curiously, and the form of Cassiel chuckles.

"Yes, it took some time for his heart to make its true desires known. At first I was merely the form of light that Fintan knew Cassiel knew to be; over time I became more and more human and many of the changes were gradual. The last was over a century ago, and so it seems that Fintan is truly happy with me as I am now." He smiles fondly at the frozen form beside him before he continues. "In this place, he could finally have what he _truly_ wanted, the thing he'd waited for all of his life: for Cassiel to return to him, and for them to build a life together." He turns his attention back to Gabriel, who sits unmoving as he tries to process everything.

Fintan spent his life pining for an angel he had never seen, so this place had shaped his true love into a form that would be his ideal. Each corner of Heaven was constructed not from imagination or from memory, but from the deepest longing within each human soul. Peering at that soul now, the brightest one he's ever seen, everything clicks into place for him: Cassiel and this human truly are soulmates. He can't even imagine the depths of his brother's suffering now.

Gabriel stares at the other man before him: dark, tousled hair, full lips, deep blue eyes. He studies him down to his core, committing every detail to memory.

"Do you think he'll ever return?"

"You mean choose rebirth?" Cassiel shrugs. "Why would he? All he's ever desired is here now. He's earned it, don't you think?"

"Yes, of course. It's just that...Cassiel, the _true_ Cassiel, is down on Earth somewhere. Waiting much as Fintan waited, do you see? And if their souls could truly come together on Earth, then they could both be here someday, together."

Cassiel looks down at his hands, considering before he answers.

"It will not be an easy task to convince him of what you say. He's given to mistrust so much after...well, after everything. It may take some time for him to make a decision like that."

"I know," sighs Gabriel. "It can only be his decision. I cannot ask it of him, nor can you. That's not how it works."

Cassiel looks at Fintan for a long time.

"He deserves to be with his soulmate someday, for I will always be a substitute. I don't even truly love him, though I wish I could. I'm just an apparition. The love that I show him is merely a reflection."

"A reflection?" Gabriel feels like he should understand this intrinsically, that there should be nothing in Heaven beyond his comprehension, yet this being is a great mystery to him.

"Yes. His love for Cassiel is what gives me form out of the void, you see, but I'm only a mirror. All the love I show him, it isn't real. Only his own love for Cassiel, reflected back at him."

For the first time in the many millennia of his existence, Gabriel feels...awe. It's obvious to him now that a great injustice has been done as he looks at love personified, sitting before him in a windswept corner of Heaven.

Cassiel finally turns his gaze back to Gabriel. "I hope the day comes that they find one another again."

Gabriel looks into those eyes, blue like a stormy sky would be if this corner of Heaven ever saw thunder. He finally nods before snapping his fingers, freeing Fintan from his state while he simultaneously disappears.

He has to find his Cassiel. He has amends to make, and now he has an idea of where to start.

*******

**__** _Old Swiss Confederacy, 1748_

Gabriel remembers vividly his brother's long fall from Heaven, watching the entire time he plummeted helplessly to Earth, no wings to slow his fall, to cradle the air around him for a soft landing. He'd seen where he landed, deep in the forest near a human village, before he'd turned away and presented Michael with the severed wings holding most of Castiel's grace. He'd held on to a single feather, though even he couldn't explain why.

He takes himself to that same forest now, keeping his form invisible to humans as he finds the place where Castiel fell. There's a glade here, now, where remnants of Castiel's remaining grace leaked into the very earth, lush and verdant, the soil unable to resist bursting into life at Heaven's touch. He senses the reason for this is not very far, and it only takes a few minutes to locate the form he seeks.

"Hello, brother," Gabriel says to the disembodied light hovering in the trees. Castiel doesn't move to look at him, and Gabriel thinks he's probably remembering how he saw him last: standing at the precipice of Heaven holding his severed wings, watching him as he fell. Gabriel moves closer, reaching out to touch, but Castiel flinches away.

"Don't," he says, and Gabriel withdraws, but only just. "We are no longer brothers, as I recall, and I'm certain your being here is forbidden." He continues to ignore the archangel, choosing to keep his focus on what looks to be a festival nearby, as if he's letting the joy of the villagers soothe him. 

Once upon a time Gabriel would have reprimanded an angel severely for such disrespect, but it's difficult to apply this rule to Castiel, now. It has been over a decade since he'd landed in this part of the world, and Gabriel is sure that in all that time no other angel has come to find him. He probably can't imagine what any agent of Heaven would want with him now.

Gabriel is in no hurry, so he doesn't speak again for a long time, letting Castiel grow accustomed to his presence, let his guard down a little. Eventually, slowly, like cornering a frightened animal, he moves to stand abreast of the tree line next to Castiel. It's only then that he speaks again, softly, as though afraid someone else might hear. 

"There are no orders Michael could give that would make you any less my brother." 

Castiel looks at him, finally, at that. Gabriel wonders how he sees him now, this outcast from Heaven, invisible to the humans around him, wingless and formless. To the villagers in the clearing, Gabriel's radiance would be so glorious it would hurt to look upon him, but Castiel seems unimpressed by it entirely, even after so many years without it. 

"What do you want, Gabriel?" he finally asks, seeming unable to contain his curiosity any longer. The archangel sighs, turning away to look back at the revelry in the clearing before them. 

"I never wanted this for you. It wasn't my choice. I simply followed the orders I was given, without considering the outcome."

"Considering the _outcome_?" responds Castiel, incredulously. "I was _cast out_ , Gabriel, what other outcome did you expect?"

"No, I mean, I knew what the outcome for you would be, that's not what I meant. I meant...I didn't consider how it would affect _me_." 

Castiel stares at his profile, as if he's pondering. "You look spectacularly unaffected, honestly."

"But I'm _not_ ," Gabriel hisses, still keeping his voice low. 

"I don't know why you expect me to care about how this has impacted _you_. You'll have to forgive me if I don't look on you with compassion."

"That's fair, Castiel, and I understand. It's just that...I never understood you before, when you talked about all the things you felt. I didn't know what you meant by that, to _feel_ , but now I think I do."

Castiel turns away from the clearing and makes his way deeper into the forest, away from the humans, and Gabriel follows.

"You said you never wanted this for me," he says, changing the topic. "Was there something else you wanted, instead? For me to accept Michael's offer for reconditioning? To erase myself and rejoin the fold, tabula rasa, able to follow orders without thought, just like you?"

"No!" shouts Gabriel, voice finally rising from a whisper to a shout. "I don't know what I wanted then. _Then_ doesn't matter, nothing I talk about can ever take it back. I mean _this,_ " he says, gesturing to the forest all around them, "this solitary existence you've made for yourself here. It's worse than being in prison, Castiel, for you do it to yourself."

"What would you have me do? Take a vessel, rob a human soul of its life for my own purposes? I can't bring myself to do that, Gabriel. I'm not on a mission, I have no orders to fulfill, take part in no duties. For what reason should I take a vessel?" 

"So you can have something resembling a _life,_ Castiel! So you can seek out that which was taken from you and have a chance for a real life!"

"How? By wandering the earth for all eternity, looking for the single soul I loved in a sea of human faces? This planet holds nearly _a billion people_. You took my wings and most of my grace..."

"I was following orders!"

"...the very tools I would need to find the thing I seek, and you expect me to have _hope_?" he screams at last. 

The clearing falls silent as they stare at one another.

"There's no longer any place for you in Heaven. This is true. But..." Gabriel holds up a finger, silencing the retort he can see coming, "...you will be here on Earth _for all eternity_. You should make the best of it. Live as much of a human life as you can, interact with them, experience all they have to offer. Maybe you will find another you can love, in time. Don't..." he points "...shake your head at me, Castiel." 

"Since when do you talk about humanity as though it has anything good to offer?" 

Gabriel looks back in the direction they had come, thinking.

"There are many things I see differently since you fell in love, Castiel. Maybe I don't understand them all as readily as you did, but I _see._ I want to help you, Cassie. You have been wronged by Heaven."

Castiel gasps at that. It's blasphemy, especially from the lips of an archangel who has stood in the presence of God himself, but Gabriel does not care. God has not been around for a long time, and there is much about Heaven these days that gives him pause.

"Help me how?"

"I'm going to build you a human vessel of your own."

*******

Castiel seems awestruck as he looks upon Gabriel's work. The power of archangels is astonishing, but it's only ever used in grandiose and frightening ways. What Gabriel has done is elegant, subdued, and shows a deftness and skill Castiel likely did not know he possessed. And why would he, when Gabriel has never used his power for anything so selfless? He tries not to show his pride in the form before them, standing back instead for Castiel to inspect it.

Lying in the center of the glade, among the spring wildflowers and long grasses, is a human vessel. An empty, lifeless body, to be sure, but not a dead one. Gabriel has crafted it from the very earth on which they stand, has patiently carved each of its bones, woven it with muscle and sinew and nerve, gently wrapping it in tissue before adding the details. Details he'd taken from a particular form in a particular corner of Heaven, right down to the eyes like a sea full of storm.

Castiel looks at it, lying there, and Gabriel hopes he feels a kinship to this body crafted just for him and is not just marvelling at Gabriel's art.

"Take a good, long look at it, Castiel," he says, startling him. "You'll never see it this way again."

"What do you mean?" 

"Once you've joined with this vessel, you'll only ever see it again from inside, or in a reflection," he grins to himself, "which I imagine you'll be doing a lot, because it _is_ rather stunning." Castiel is too distracted to take the bait, and when he doesn't answer Gabriel continues in a more somber tone. "There are a few other things I'd like to do, if you'll permit me." 

"What things?"

Gabriel circles his creation, lying there in what is now the first light of early morning, and faces Castiel. 

"I'd like to imbue it with some protections. Hide you, as it were."

"Hide me from what?" Castiel whispers, but Gabriel thinks he knows, deep down. 

There is no punishment Heaven can dole out that would ever make it forget it was betrayed by one of its own, and he fears that, someday, there will be a reckoning. Heaven intends that Castiel should suffer for all eternity, so if he were ever to find true happiness, the angels might feel they need to intervene. Gabriel will shield him from that if he can, for as long as he can, but only if Castiel permits. 

They look at one another in silent understanding until Castiel nods in acceptance. The body before them glows minutely for a moment, pores like a million small stars, before abruptly fading out again. 

"I've carved sigils into the very bone that will shield this vessel from all other angels. None will ever be able to find you, unless they stumble onto you by chance. None but me. I've placed my own mark there, so that I alone can always find you."

"Why?" Castiel blurts out.

Gabriel smiles sadly, looking down at the form he's made, wondering how to explain. 

"What's happened to you, Castiel...it has affected me greatly. I'm not sure I understand it, actually. I would like to talk with you about it sometime, if I may. I think -- no, I _feel_ \-- that you're the only one who will understand me. And I want...I want to always be able to look after you."

He can tell that Castiel wants to refuse, at first, to question or argue or just rebel. Gabriel looks at him, trying to convey all the swirling emotion within him into a single look: one of regret and no small sorrow, the look of one seeking penance. It seems to silence Castiel, and as he nods tersely Gabriel sighs with relief.

"Your remaining grace will be enough to sustain this vessel's life force for an eternity. It cannot be destroyed, and though it may suffer injury it will always heal; but remember that you will be among the humans now, and they will see you as one of them. This vessel will never change, so I'm afraid you must learn to adapt to a new place every so often, before people become suspicious -- but you need never be all alone, brother. Never again." 

Castiel kneels by the body before him, staring into its face. 

"How did you think of _this_ form, Gabriel? Is there a reason?" he asks. Gabriel thinks of the windswept Heaven he just came from, of the created comfort that exists there. He thinks it would pain Castiel to know of it, but he doesn't want to lie. 

"I may have...I may have gotten inspiration from somewhere. I'd rather not say, but I'll tell you if you insist."

Castiel seems to ponder a moment, looking at the male form with its dark hair, its full lips. 

"No, but tell me something else instead: is Fintan still in Heaven? I know you, Gabriel. I know you've checked." Yes, Castiel _would_ know that about him. 

"He is. I can't tell you more than that Castiel."

"What you said that day, when..." he trails off for a moment before finally looking up at Gabriel. "Can it be true? That if I found him again I could become human?"

Gabriel looks at him for a moment before kneeling opposite him in the grass, Castiel's human vessel a bridge he hopes will breach the abyss between them someday. 

"Your situation is unique, Castiel. It's never happened to anyone before, so there's no proof I can offer you. I can only tell you this, since I know you won't ever repeat it: as the archangels discussed your punishment, Michael considered the possibility of this before discarding it as impossible. If it's something that Michael knew of enough to consider, then it's likely something our Father once told him about."

"Why can't you just watch Fintan, take me to him when he is reborn?"

"You have to discover one another again without help. It's the flaw in Father's design, Castiel, the flaw all humans possess: free will." 

Castiel gazes back down at the human body before him, waiting to take its first breath. 

"Then so long as he remains in a place I can never go, I will make the best of my time here, as you wish."

Gabriel sighs, relief and hope mingled in his exhale. Several minutes later a new being is born in the clearing, the life force of an angel inhabiting its limbs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find reference pics for this chapter here:  
> [Chapter 3 Reference](http://zaphodsgirl.tumblr.com/post/166123615392/castiel-falls-from-heaven-and-lands-on-earth-in)


	4. Despair

“And I’ll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take.” - _I Found_ , Amber Run

***

_California, the United States, 2016_

Castiel's outward appearance has not changed in the nearly three hundred years since he strode out of the forest, shocking a handful of villagers with his unexpected, and naked, arrival. He'd stayed there for longer than he probably should have, living among the people, learning how to be human. He could use his grace in small ways and gained a reputation as a healer, revered by the villagers so that they named the place for him. It gave him a sense of purpose, putting a dent in his abject despair for the first time since he fell. He had to move on when the fact that he didn't age as those around him began to be evident, but he never forgot how it felt to be useful, how it lessened his pain to help people. 

He has learned to interact with the human race, to adapt their mannerisms, to care for them -- but he still isn't one of them, because he still hasn't found the one human soul he's actually searching for. 

For all that Castiel remains the same, everything around him changes dramatically, both on Earth and in Heaven. Gabriel visits often, if erratically, and each time Castiel can see the difference in his nature. It takes decades for him to admit that he, too, feels things as sharply as Castiel does, that he is disillusioned with his place in the Host and their inability to adapt and change, how the long absence of their Father troubles him. He spends more and more time on Earth, distancing himself from Heaven, and eventually fashions a vessel of his own after he decides to cut himself off from there forever. 

He confesses to Castiel that his fate affected others, too, and that all over the world there are angels who have fallen from Heaven by choice. Not many, he says, but Castiel is still shaken to his core to hear it. 

"I don't understand why they would do such a thing. To defy the council and choose a human life? I wouldn't wish that on any of them."

"Cassie, their fate isn't the same as yours. Many other angels questioned things as you had, but until you stood before the council and expressed your desire for something different, none of them had ever voiced their concerns. None of them had ever allowed themselves to express their doubts, their...their _feelings_ , none of them! All of us accepted what we were supposed to be and hid any differences in our nature. Until _you_ , Castiel, and seeing how you were treated did two things for them: showed them they were not alone, and that it was better to just leap than ask for permission. Anael was the first, but not the last. I'd lost count of how many by the time I finally left."

"But it's so _lonely_ , Gabriel." 

"No, Cassie, it's not, not for them. You were punished by force. They exercise free will, and though their fall separates them from their grace they are transformed by it, born human unto Earth. They grow up, they marry, they procreate, and they die, for they are human now -- living normal lives with no knowledge they were ever anything more."

"And such is my fate, because the loyal soldier in me asked for _permission_ ," Castiel spits bitterly, running his hands through his hair. "Though if I had jumped and been reborn on Earth as human, Fintan and I would still have been separated."

Gabriel has the good grace to look ashamed. 

"I will never stop being sorry. You must know that." 

"I know," Castiel sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You've done all you can to atone, Gabriel, and I understand. I'm just bitter. I wish I knew how to stop." 

They'd had that conversation centuries ago and Castiel is still bitter, but he tempers it with purpose and takes joy in small comforts. He has traversed the entire globe, making a new home for himself every few years and then moving on before anyone can become suspicious. It used to be easier, even as recently as thirty years ago, to move through the world as an immortal, unchanging and unknown, but still he manages. Though he has yet to find the one soul he longs for above all others, he has managed to connect on some level with others over the long years, to make friends wherever he goes. 

He has taken lovers to try and find the thing that he's missing in someone else, but it never lasts. Always Castiel's heart will belong to another, and eventually it becomes apparent to anyone who shares his bed. The last was Meg, a WAC he met at the end of the second Great War. He'd just arrived in the States for the first time, weary from the war and the role he'd played in it as a medic. He succumbed to her enthusiasm for connection, her desire to share a life with him; she left when she realized he couldn’t return any of that in equal measure, and he stopped trying with anyone else. 

It's one of the things about humanity that he wishes he could easily adopt, that hopefulness, but it eludes him. Perhaps it's because humans don't live long enough to become disillusioned with the feeling, but for Castiel the days are long, and they roll into longer months compounding endless years that will stretch into an eternity none of humanity will never know the despair of.

Even so, he hasn't forgotten the lesson he learned in that village when he first inhabited his vessel: that helping people lessens his despair. Currently he's a hospital nurse, which Gabriel finds amusing for some reason, gifting Castiel with scrubs in outrageous patterns that he secretly enjoys and takes pleasure in wearing. He has the knowledge and skill to be a doctor, and he has been in the past -- but in this age it's easier to disappear in the nursing corps. Good doctors get recognition and accolades, and Castiel doesn't want to draw attention to himself. Good nurses just get more work, and he'll take all the work he can get. 

Working makes time pass faster.

Thanks to tricks he's learned from Gabriel (who adapted to humanity much more easily than Castiel, throwing himself into the seedier aspects of it with gusto) it's not difficult for him to change his credentials just enough as he moves from place to place that he can get work easily but avoid suspicion. He doesn't need the money -- he's been alive long enough that even small investments he made long ago are enough now to keep a small country afloat -- but he needs the distraction, the sense of purpose, to mask the hopelessness he feels.

So it's completely unexpected when the thing he's stopped searching for finds him instead.

*******

Cas pulls into a free space in the underground employee lot twenty minutes before his shift begins as per usual, heading into the elevator with his backpack and a tray of coffees. Getting off on his floor, he treads his usual path into the breakroom to deposit his lunch, then into the locker room to change and put away his bag. Clocking in, he grabs the tray and heads out to the nurse's station where Jess is already sitting.

"How do you do that?" he asks, putting a cup in front of her before taking his own and setting the other two aside for when Missouri and Ellen arrive. "You beat me here every single time even though we live on the same street. It's incredible." 

She grins at him over the cup she'd eagerly snatched up and starts sipping from it, giving him a wink.

"I don't hate mornings nearly as much as you do, so I don't fight the waking up process so hard. It makes me incredibly punctual," she teases, poking him in the ribs through his scrubs, patterned with hamsters today. He draws away and good-naturedly gives her ponytail a yank before looking over what he needs to focus on for the day.

He's been at this hospital, and here in California, for two years now. He's been in North America for over fifty years, finding it easier to move from state to state and start fresh than from country to country in this day and age. He doesn't mind so much -- there is so much variation in this single continent that his geography and his job are never boring, even if the day to day sameness of his situation is. He's better now at making small connections, too, and can even say that he enjoys the life he leads here. The diminished state of his grace means he needs to eat and sleep like any other human, and he's learned to enjoy socializing with friends over food and drink. 

None of it will ever fill the void within, not truly, but it seems smaller somehow to have people crowding around the edges of it. He's grateful for Jess with her infectious smile, always trying to include him in things, for Ellen and her motherly concern, and even Missouri, who looks at him sometimes in a way that makes him wonder what she sees.

It's a small life but he's content with it, and he decided long ago that contentment was the most he could expect from his existence. He enjoys interacting with his co-workers, with the different types of patients that move in and out of their sphere of influence, using his grace to help in small, undetected ways. It's the kind of existence any other angel would find beneath them, and Cas wonders if he would have learned to enjoy it so much if the path of his life hadn't been forced upon him. It's a question that can never be answered, but he ponders it just the same as he walks the halls of the hospital.

At the end of their shift, as they're heading into the locker room, Jess snaps her fingers.

"I almost forgot! We're having a barbecue the day after tomorrow, since I actually have a Saturday off and Sam's last case is wrapped up. Can you bring something? I loved that peach berry crumble you brought in to work a couple of weeks ago, and I think Sam would, too."

"I like how you don't even ask if I have other plans or if I'll come, you just assume I will and ask for free food."

"Of _course_ you will, because you adore me. And you might adore my husband, but you're smart enough to keep it to yourself because you know he's taken and I'm kind of scrappy for a blonde girl and I could totally take you in a fight..." 

"Okay, okay, okay, I will make the crumble!"

She grins and playfully punches him in the shoulder as she closes her locker.

"Come over at noon!" she says before she leaves for the day, sauntering out of the locker room with a swish of her ponytail. Ellen grins at him.

"She talked you into bringing food, didn't she?" 

"Of course she did."

"Sucker."

He shakes his head and sighs in the most exaggerated manner he can muster. 

"I regret ever telling her and Sam that the house across the street from me was for sale."

Ellen leaves, patting him on the shoulder as he's shrugging into his jacket, and as he closes his locker door he realizes Missouri is still down by her own, looking at him curiously. 

"What is it? Is there something wrong?"

She shakes her head, taking her purse out of the locker and shutting it firmly.

"No, sugar, nothing's _wrong_ , exactly." 

"What do you mean?" he asks, curious.

She stands in front of him for a few moments, tilting her head to peer up at him, and he gets that feeling again that she sees so much more than normal people, a little worried about what she's going to say. Eventually she reaches up to pat him on the cheek.

"Things are going to change for you, sweetie, very soon. It's been a long time coming, I think." She heads out of the room, leaving a stunned Cas standing there for a few minutes before he rouses himself and heads for the door, shaking his head.

As expected, he walks across the street on Saturday at exactly noon, bearing a baking dish with the requested foodstuffs that is still slightly warm to the touch. The front door is open, and he's saved the trouble of trying to open the storm door by Jess's husband Sam, who spots him through the screen and trots over to hold it for him. 

"Hey Cas, thanks for coming! Ooh, is this the peach berry crumble thing Jess told me about?"

"It is, it just needs to be kept warm until we eat it."

"Well, you know the way," Sam says, gesturing to the kitchen as he closes the screen door again.

Cas is putting his dish on the lower, unoccupied rack of the oven when he feels a slight pulse in his grace, like the first fluttering beat of a heart that's been dormant. It sings under his skin so sharp and clear for a moment that he closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before he stands and closes the oven door. The feeling has faded but not disappeared completely and he concentrates, feeling along the nerves until he finds it again, humming ever so smoothly within him. It's never acted independently of his control before, and he tilts his head as he places a hand over his heart, trying to focus on the sensation without influencing it. 

It flares up again, unbidden, and he gasps slightly as his eyes fly open and the sensation changes from a low idle to a gentle pull, a desire to move in a different direction. He walks slowly towards the french doors that lead out onto the deck and the yard beyond, peering out through the glass and clutching his chest as the pull gets stronger.

He spots Jess first, her blond ponytail bobbing in delight as she laughs and claps her hands, Sam standing beside her with a beer and laughing with his head thrown back, and a dark-haired woman next to him that Cas doesn't know, smiling wide though not laughing like the rest. 

Next to her is a man with his hands in his pockets, smirking with delight as he sees the reactions to whatever story he's just told, and Cas can only see his profile but he knows. The long-sleeping grace within him _knows_ , has awakened from its slumber because it has finally found the one thing on this earth that it's waited for: the soul of his beloved.

Fintan's soul here, on Earth, finally near him.

Cas feels his heart racing in tandem with his mind, thinking about how many unbelievable coincidences must have occurred to converge into this single moment where he finds his soulmate again purely by accident, standing twenty-five feet away from him, in a sunny backyard on a random Saturday afternoon somewhere in California.

He backs away, gasping, retreating into the center of the kitchen and turning away from the door, bracing himself against the counter as he tries to catch his breath, regain his composure, think about what he wants to say. The sensation is getting stronger, and he marvels at his grace pulsing through his veins, a feeling so long forgotten that he loses himself in it and doesn't hear the door opening. It flares once more with a hot pulse just as he hears a voice behind him.

"Are you alright?" 

He turns sharply toward the sound, startled and nervous, and the man's eyes widen in shock as he takes a step back, one hand on the door handle and the other stretched out towards Cas in some kind of aborted gesture. 

They stare at one another in a frozen tableau: the fallen angel Castiel, and the human with the soul he defied Heaven for.

*******

Dean Winchester spent all his life wandering, and he's not sure why. His dad led a nomadic lifestyle, dragging Dean and his younger brother Sam all over the country after their mom died, stopping in places at random and working odd jobs until they moved on again for one reason or another. For his brother there had never been any other kind of life; he was an infant when their mother died, so all his childhood memories are of temporary homes all over the country. Dean actually has a vague memory, blurred and distant, of what it was like to have a permanent home -- a room of his own, a kitchen table, their mother at the stove -- and he wonders if that's why he always feels restless: because there is always that yearning, that internal tug, to a place called home that doesn't exist anymore. 

It is always the same cycle: transfer to a firehouse in another state, make friends, make a life, carve out a niche for himself. At the point where most people start to grow roots, Dean would start to fidget, feel a longing inside for a place unknown, a place other than where he was, and he would start looking for openings in a new town, and everything would start again. He'd just gotten to Indiana two years ago when he went to the local school to do a fire safety demonstration and met an inquisitive little boy named Ben, then met Ben's stunning mother, Lisa. Having them in his life didn't temper his restlessness, but made it easier to smother. 

A year ago, he'd gone out to California for a long overdue visit to his brother, and for the first time since he was a little boy felt the sensation of coming home. He knew he didn't want to stay in Indiana, but he also didn't want to leave Lisa and Ben behind. It took a few months of convincing, and a few more months of planning, but right after the new year they all relocated together.

It's been a busy few months, getting used to their new jobs, and Ben to his new school, but Dean feels at peace now in a way he never has before. Maybe all that was missing in his life was being near his brother, his only remaining family, both of them settled in close proximity to one another. Dean is happy, more or less; he has a career he loves and an amazing girlfriend whose kid treats him like a dad. He loves his brother and his brother's wife, loves the California sunshine, loves that the feeling of restlessness that was always under his skin seems to have tempered itself, retreated from the equation -- though deep down, he still feels as though a part of him is missing.

He has just finished telling his favorite story since moving to California, about how they got a fire call one night that disturbed Victor trying to get laid up on top of one of the rigs, and the high-pitched screaming from his girl as the truck went tearing out of the station. He's watching Sam and Jess laugh, while Lisa grins because she's heard this story before but it's still pretty funny -- and he suddenly feels very strongly that he needs to go into the house. 

He glances up to the deck and thinks he sees a flash of movement through the doors, so he excuses himself and jogs up the stairs, letting himself in through the doors to the kitchen. There's a man standing there, leaning heavily against the counter with his back to Dean, struggling for breath, and he has the strangest sensation that they know one another.

"Are you alright?" he asks, concerned, and when the man turns to face him Dean is so struck by his eyes that he takes a step back even as he reaches out, thinking _there you are_ for some inexplicable reason. He stares, trying to place his face, and his mind whirls. He _knows_ they've never met before, and at the same time he feels both baffled and relieved, the way you do when you've been searching for your favorite shirt and then find it, finally, in some place really unexpected. 

"Sorry if I startled you. I'm Sam's brother, Dean," he says, putting out his hand, and when their palms touch he swears he feels like electricity has suffused itself just under his skin, blood warm like the banked coals of a fire. 

"Dean, sorry. I, uh, I was deep in thought and didn't hear you come in." 

"That's okay, uh..." Dean looks at him meaningfully, raising an eyebrow, and he sputters.

"Castiel. Sorry. My name is Castiel. Cas," he finally manages, dropping Dean's hand. 

_Castiel_. 

He knows that name. Or not _quite_ that name, but there's something there that he's missing, and it feels like it's on the tip of his tongue even as his mind goes blank.

"Nice to meet you, Cas," he responds woodenly, falling into those blue eyes that seem filled with despair. 

"Dean?" he hears, and turns to see Lisa coming through the door. He smiles as she leans into him and puts an arm around her shoulders, and she smiles sweetly as she puts a hand on his chest.

"Lisa, this is Cas. Do you work with Sam or Jess?" Dean asks, and the light-hearted, jovial tone he affects rings so false that he almost misses Cas's response.

"I work at the hospital with Jess. I'm a nurse," he responds. "Will you excuse me? I haven't told Jess I'm here yet." He smiles slightly as he heads out onto the deck, and Dean lets out the breath he didn't even know he'd been holding. 

"Jess asked if I could bring out the condiments from the fridge," Lisa says, walking over to open it up and peer inside. "Could you help me?"

"Yeah," Dean says absently, staring out the door as he watches Cas talking to Sam at the grill until he feels a plate being pressed into his hands. He blinks stupidly at the sliced onions and tomatoes covered with cling film before looking up at Lisa, who's giving him a considering look.

"Wanna talk about it?" she asks, and he glances back out the door for a second before he looks back at her.

"I'm...not sure?" 

"Come on. Let's have some food and talk to some people. You can explain why you've got that perplexed look on your face after we get home, okay?"

"Yeah," he says, as he opens the door, "if I've figured out why by then."

*******

Cas walks out onto the deck and engages Sam in conversation, trying to quiet the thoughts swirling in his head, the racing of his heart.

Dean.

His _eyes_. Who knows how many lifetimes, how many iterations of the human body this soul has known -- but in this one, they are the exact same eyes that Cas remembers, lush and green like the land where he first learned to love them.

In those eyes Cas saw not an ounce of recognition.

Whatever he thought they were to each other half a millennia ago, it was clearly not as profound for Fintan as it was for him. Castiel lost his home, his family, his place in the universe and his _wings_ for a human soul that has forgotten him.

He has to get through this somehow. He just has to get through this as best he can until he can go home without arousing any suspicion, go home and try to process this. 

For the rest of the afternoon he makes it a point to avoid Dean as much as possible, to never face him directly, to only talk to him as part of a group discussion. He spends a couple of hours in the pool, because swimming is the closest sensation he's found to flying, and it clears his head and strengthens his resolve. He can get through this, can keep up the charade that everything is fine until he gets home -- where he plans to fall apart. 

*******

For the rest of the afternoon Dean watches Cas, trying to puzzle him out. He only manages to talk to him when other people are around, and if he didn't know better he'd think Cas was deliberately avoiding him.

_Does_ he know better, though? Why does he feel like he knows him?

He stares at Cas as he treads water in the pool, talking to Jess as they drink beers, and knows that he hasn't forgotten that face, because he's never seen it before. Those _eyes_. He knows he'd remember exactly where he'd seen those eyes before if they'd ever met in this lifetime.

By the time Lisa asks if he's ready to leave, he's no closer to solving the mystery of Castiel.

As they head towards home, Lisa gives him a considering look from the passenger seat but doesn't say anything until the Impala is parked in the garage and they're back in the house.

"Coffee?" she asks him, and he nods absently as he sits at the counter, idly playing with his keys until Lisa puts a steaming mug in front of him and takes the opposite seat. She takes the hair tie off her wrist and pulls her long, dark hair into a messy bun as he takes a sip. 

"Dean," she says after a moment, firmly putting her own mug down. "Maybe it's time we talked about the elephant in the room."

"The...what?" he says stupidly, his train of thought thrown off the rails, and she shakes her head with a look of fond exasperation. 

"Ben's been at camp for three weeks now, are you trying to tell me that you haven't noticed?" He just blinks at her. "Dean, we barely interact with each other without him here. We eat together, we share the same bed...but we never talk about anything, unless it's about how much we miss Ben."

He thinks carefully about the last couple of weeks, trying to disprove what she's said, but he can't, and looks up at her with surprise.

"Look. I'm not stupid, okay? I know you fell for my kid first, and that's fine. I love that you love Ben. But I wonder if maybe the reasons we got together don't make sense anymore."

"But we're a family! We're great together, the three of us." Lisa sighs and looks away, tapping her fingers on the side of her mug.

"Are we though?" she muses. "Think about what we're really doing together, especially after Ben comes home. Can you do that for me?" 

"Yeah," he says quietly. "Yeah, I can do that." 

She nods as she gets up from the counter, taking her mug with her into the den. He sips at his coffee, trying to think about what she's said, but his thoughts keep turning back to another subject that he can't get out of his mind. 

_Castiel_. But that's not quite it, is it? He closes his eyes, trying to will the answer out of his subconscious, but nothing comes. 

Later that night, he dreams of cliffs above a stormy sea.

*******

Cas comes home to his empty apartment before nightfall, leaning back against the door to shut it and then sliding down until he's sitting on the floor. He bangs the back of his head against the door several times, trying to stop the cacophony of thought inside it.

All day his grace had reached out to the soul of his beloved, trying to draw it towards him, but Cas himself had stayed as far away as he could, because it was still bright, even brighter than he remembered, and it hurt to look upon. 

Fintan's soul had been like a shining beacon when they'd met, and for the first time Cas had known the kind of wonder humans feel when the moon hangs bright and full in the sky -- like his world had been reversed, and he was the earthbound creature staring in rapture at the stars. He'd gazed at it until he knew every dip and crevice of its form and shape, the unique whorls and eddies like a fingerprint. Five hundred years could not diminish his knowledge of the one soul he cherished above all others.

He risked everything for that soul, suffered two hundred years alone in confinement, nearly three hundred more banished and crippled, ostracized by his own kind. He has always dreamed that one day they'd find each other again, and Fintan's soul would call out to him as it did before, would recognize its other half, and he would once again be whole.

Cas sits on the floor of his entryway and thinks himself a fool.

Dean is pleasant and funny and had been nothing but polite to Cas throughout the day, but that was the nature of the soul within him: kind and caring and thoughtful of everyone around him. All Cas has to do is close his eyes and see the way Lisa looked at him to make him bang his head against the door some more. 

He should leave. He should pack his things and relocate somewhere. He is friends with Jess and Sam, they live across the _street_ , and there's no way he can stay here and avoid Dean.

He doesn't want to avoid Dean, either, because Cas still loves the soul in him with every fiber of his being, even if he's come too late. 

He sighs, sitting there, elbow on one raised knee with his other leg curled beneath it as he closes his eyes, speaking softly into the empty room. 

"I pray to the angel, Gabriel."

"What gives, Cassie," Gabe says, appearing immediately in the center of the room, "did you drop your phone or..."

Cas opens his eyes to see Gabe's back as he stands perplexed in the den, taking a minute to finally turn and spot his summoner sitting against the door. The amusement leaves his face in a flash, and he slowly moves to sit on the floor himself, cross-legged and resting his elbows on his knees as he adopts a somber air. Gabe has adapted to the human race over the years and embraced their jovial nature, but the span of millennia when he wore the mantle of Heaven's messenger will never leave him completely, and the gravity of his former office surrounds them both like a heavy quilt. It makes it that much harder for Cas to lift his heavy head and look Gabe in the eye.

"I found him," he whispers lowly, knowing Gabe can hear, and then a torrent of words pour out like a flooded river bursting over its banks. " _I found him_. It was by chance, really...or maybe by design? It seems too coincidental to be chance, now that I think of it, but what a cruel design it is, Gabe, to see him with someone else under his arm and he looked me in the _eye_ , Gabe, and he didn't know me, _he didn't know me_ and it was all for nothing, all the things that happened to bring me here they were all for _nothing._ " He's babbling, but then there are arms around him and the words are muffled by Gabriel's shoulder, and after that all that comes out are long, pained sounds of suffering and regret and sorrow that last until well after dark.


	5. Longing

“The future haunts with memories that I could never have, and hope is just a stranger wondering how it got so bad.” – _Love Song Requiem_ , Trading Yesterday 

***

Much later, Gabe convinces him to move to the sofa while he makes them both some tea. This is one of the times that Cas is grateful for the human comforts they've embraced over the centuries, and when he takes the large ceramic mug in both of his hands he clutches it to his chest, feeling the warmth of it seeping into his fingers.

Gabe sits gingerly on the other end of the sofa, turning to face Cas with a knee bent beneath him, his back against the armrest. He watches his brother hunching into himself and sighs before he addresses his profile.

"I never imagined it would come to this, Cassie. I never doubted the depth of your feeling." He watches Cas finally sip gingerly at his drink, a chamomile lavender blend that he normally finds soothing, but tonight it holds no comfort. "It didn't occur to me to doubt his, after...well. Never mind." Cas just hangs his head lower.

"I suppose I should have expected this," he finally says, so lowly that if Gabe were actually a human he would never have heard it. "Fintan had a human soul, but I thought it was special. That it was _different_ , somehow, because he could hear my true voice. Maybe deep down I didn't really believe it, because I was always too afraid to show him my true form in the waking world. Maybe I always knew deep within me that it wasn't that profound."

"That's not necessarily true! So much has happened since the last time that soul was in your presence. It's been to Heaven, Cas, and who knows how many resurrections it's experienced here on Earth?"

"Ah, and let's not forget how much I, too, have changed since we were last in each other's presence." Cas places his mug firmly on the coffee table before he leans back against the sofa, craning his neck to stare up at the dark ceiling. "I never let him look upon my true form, but maybe somehow he _knows_ , Gabe. Maybe he knows deep down that I'm not what I was. That I'm _broken_."

"You're not broken..."

"Damaged, then..."

"Dammit, Cas!" Gabe shouts before he can restrain himself, but Cas doesn't even flinch. "Every time I look at you, it pains me. I can never look at you without _regret_. Without wishing I had been as enlightened as you were, been brave enough to question and rebel before I blindly followed orders. But all the regret I feel is for my own stupidity -- not because I think you're broken. I think you're more whole than any member of the host, and I've thought so for a long time. Your suffering has elevated you into a place that none of them, none of _us_ , can ever follow. _We_ are the ones who are broken, for we feel _nothing._ " 

Cas turns his head slightly, enough to peer at Gabe sitting stoically in the same position, hands wrapped about his own mug, a white one with "Trauma Queen" on it in bright pink letters that Gabe had actually bought Cas as a gag gift. He has a sneaking suspicion that Gabe grabbed it on purpose, because it's like him to try and inject levity into a grave situation using any means at his disposal. 

"You do not feel _nothing_ , Gabe. I know you don't. You haven't for a long time."

"Maybe. But I chose this while you had all your choices taken from you, and still you adapt to your surroundings. You try valiantly to live among the humans and help them. To use your existence to do _good_ for humanity, even though they're the cause of your suffering, for without having loved one of them you would still be an angel."

"Yes. I loved one. And apparently the love of an angel can survive over centuries, but that from a human soul is fragile, and fleeting, and no longer there for me."

"Cassie..."

"No. It's done. Fintan's soul has been reborn into a man named Dean, and that man loves another. I'm as trapped in this life as I ever have been, and will make the best of it. I'll never have the opportunity to love Fintan as I always dreamed, but at least I've seen him again, and I like the person he's become. I have to learn to live with that."

"What will you do?"

"What I've always done. Focus on the day to day and get on with it." He sits up, grabbing his lukewarm tea and taking a huge gulp of it before turning to mimic Gabe's posture, facing him from the opposite end of the sofa. "There's nothing else to do."

"If that's what you think than you should leave here, Cassie."

"Maybe. Or maybe it will be better to stay, to have it driven home for me that there's nothing there. Maybe it will help me get past it and move on."

Gabe sighs but doesn't speak again for a long time as they sit silently in the darkness, sipping their cooling tea, each of them lost in their own thoughts.

"Do you think it's possible that he just needs some time?" Gabe finally ventures to say. "Your grace recognized him right away because it's spent centuries _looking_ , so of course it would flare into recognition at the first sighting. But...human souls are different, Cassie, they suppress a lot of things, often unconscious of all they carry within them."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that maybe that soul didn't know that it was _searching_ for something. Fintan loved you, he waited for you, and though it wasn't your fault that you never came back, _he didn't know that_. Maybe it's a defense mechanism, to have buried all that deep inside. That soul hasn't been near you for five hundred years, Cassie, and don't," he points, "shake your head at me!"

"You're asking me to have faith," Cas whispers hoarsely. "I don't know if I have any left in me, Gabe."

"Oh, Cassie," Gabe says as he gets up and takes their empty mugs into the kitchen. "You're like Pandora's box."

"I'm filled with horrid deceptions masquerading as gifts?" Cas says sardonically, and he can hear Gabe rolling his eyes in the kitchen even with his back turned. "That's not very motivational."

"You're an ass. So Pandora wants to see the gifts, and in her curiosity opens the box, which lets all the ills of man like disease and despair loose upon the world -- but she manages to close it before the last thing could escape, do you remember what it was?" Cas looks at him leaning on the doorway now, arms crossed and expectant.

"It was...hope." 

Gabe huffs a tiny laugh, nodding as he walks back into the room.

"That's how I see you. You've been living all this time in a succession of tiny, little lives, but you do it without malice, or hatred, or contempt. All these years, all these places, always the same Cas, settling in gracefully in the new life he's chosen, among new people. You do it so easily because there's one thing you've always held within you, precious and safe." He sits back down beside Cas on the sofa, turning to the side so he can face him. "You're Pandora's box."

Cas sits unmoving for a minute, then reaches out to take Gabe in a fierce embrace, hiding his face in the crook of his neck as he struggles not to cry.

"It was actually a jar," he croaks into Gabe's ear, "it was just mistranslated as 'box'." 

"Have I mentioned that you're an ass?"

*******

**__** _Dean: Hey Rockstar, I have some time to stop by before I start my rotation. Want a milkshake?_

_Jess: YES! You are the best BIL ever._

_Dean: That's cuz I'm the only one you have._

_Jess: Thank god, could you imagine how hard it would be for the competition if you had any?_

Dean laughs, putting his phone in the pocket of his uniform as he gets up to the counter.

"Could I get two milkshakes, a vanilla and a strawberry?" he asks. "Wait, can you add another vanilla milkshake to that?" he adds quickly, as it pops into his head the Castiel works the same shift as Jess. He just met the guy, but everybody loves milkshakes. It would be rude to bring one for Jess and not for him, and vanilla seems like a safe bet. Everyone likes vanilla.

He leaves his own milkshake in the Impala after he parks in the underground garage, tapping his foot nervously for the entire elevator ride. Making his way down the corridor, he sees Jess right away as he gets to her station, and she squeals with delight as he hands her a cup, and as he chats with her he sees Cas coming back to the station out of the corner of his eye.

*******

"Hey, it's Cas, right?" says a voice that already feels too familiar to him, and he freezes in place, looking up into a mirthful pair of green eyes.

"Uh...Dean! Hi! I mean yes! I mean..." he shakes his head as he trails off, feeling flabbergasted and stupid, but Dean just smiles at him and his heart stops a little. 

"I stopped in to bring Jess a treat, and she'd mentioned that you guys worked the same rotation so I grabbed one for you, too." He holds a cup out to Castiel, straw peeking out of the top, and shakes it slightly. "I hope you like vanilla. I thought it was a pretty safe bet, although I think it's a shame that people treat it as though it's plain. I mean, it's from an orchid. That's pretty exotic! Why does everyone act like vanilla is boring?" 

Castiel can't help it, he's grinning ear to ear as he takes the offering from Dean's hand, and their fingertips brush just a little. Maybe it's the touch of the cold cup on his skin, but he shivers.

"Thank you, Dean, that was very thoughtful of you. I love vanilla, actually, and I share your resentment at the way it's treated." He wants to tell Dean about the species of bees that had been solely responsible for making vanilla thrive in Mexico before a young boy figured out how to hand pollinate the plant in the early 19th century; of when he was a plantation doctor fifty years later in Madagascar, treating the workers who spent their days among the thick, waxy leaves of the plants, the scent of vanilla heavy on the breeze during the summer months, drenching the humid air with its fragrance. 

He wants to talk to him about things the way he's only ever talked to one other person, centuries ago, night after night in dreams; instead he puts the straw in his mouth and takes a sip.

"Oh man, you two are gonna be a pair, I can tell," Jess says, shaking her head good-naturedly. "I'm going to regret the day I put you two in the same room."

"Aw, Jess, c'mon. You know you love my crazy banter," Dean wheedles at her, leaning over the desk to poke her in the head as she bats his hand away, laughing. 

"Don't you have to be somewhere?" she asks him in mock exasperation before she enthusiastically sips what looks to be strawberry for her.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm off to work now, you harridan. Nice seeing you again, Cas!" Dean calls over his shoulder as he walks down the corridor, and it's only now that Cas realizes he's wearing a uniform. He sits down behind the desk and happily takes a sip of his milkshake, grinning to himself and completely forgetting that Jess is there until the kicks him in the shin. 

"Ow! What was that for?" he practically whines, rubbing his calf with the hand not currently around his cup. 

"You and Dean seem to be hitting it off splendidly," she says cheekily, resting her chin on one hand as she playfully sips her own milkshake. "What's that all about, huh?"

"What would it be about?" he stutters, feeling completely transparent. "I just met him at your house for the first time on Saturday!"

"Where you barely spoke to him, if I remember correctly, even though he kept trying to engage you in conversation all day."

"I'm sure he was just being polite," he replied automatically. "He's probably taking pity on me because I don't seem to have any friends except for _you_ ," he teases her to cover up his discomfort, but a million questions are running through his head. 

"Well I don't remember you grinning so hard when _we_ became friends," she says, quirking an eyebrow at him. He glares at her but doesn't take the bait, pointedly ignoring her as he checks the monitors. He didn't sense any reproach in her statement, but immediately feels chastened anyway as he sits up straight and runs a hand through his hair, pulling some paperwork towards him and vowing to put Dean out of his mind. 

"Cas," she says, and her tone is serious now. "I'm sorry to tease, I know you just met Dean and you weren't really checking him out or anything."

"His girlfriend seems very nice." There. That was a subtle deflection.

She looks at him appraisingly, as if considering what he said a little too closely. He realizes he didn't actually say that he's not interested in Dean that way and opens his mouth to add it but she answers before he can.

"You're right, Lisa is very nice," and he can't help the sinking feeling he gets when she confirms this simple fact. "Her little boy is great, too."

"Oh, I didn't realize they had any children."

" _They_ don't. _She_ has a son from before, he's about ten. She and Dean have only been dating for a couple of years."

Cas hums noncommittally, but his mind is racing. 

"So...we're gonna barbecue every weekend until Sam gets tangled up in another case again, so same time again this Saturday, okay?"

He sighs, resigned. 

"What am I bringing this time?"

"Oooh, can you make the squash thing?" She playfully kicks him in the shin again before going back to her own work, and he loses himself in thought for the rest of their shift.

*******

Dean's afraid he's being too obvious about his interest in Cas, so he deflects by teasing Jess before leaving to head over the firehouse for the next four days. He sips from his own milkshake as he drives, going over his brief encounter again in his head.

"It's from an _orchid_ , Cas, isn't that _exotic_? Jesus Christ, Dean, you sound like a moron," he mutters to himself under his breath as he finally parks and heads into the station. 

There's a lot of down time when you're on shift at a firehouse, and he spends it mulling over his own behavior. Is he...is he _attracted_ to Cas? That's part of it, he thinks, but not all. Why is he so fascinated with this guy all of a sudden? 

His romantic past falls into two distinct categories: torrid but satisfying short-term encounters meant for mutual pleasure with no attachments, and Lisa. That's it. He'd never met anyone that he had a strong desire to connect to, to get to know beyond the way their bodies fit together. Not until Lisa, and now he's trying to remember what it was about her that was different, that drew him in, that made him want to stay. 

He'd gone to do a fire safety demonstration at the local school, and Ben had been part of the class, full of questions that were surprisingly thoughtful for an eight-year old. After the demo was over one of the parent volunteers had approached him to apologize for her son, but Dean had actually enjoyed it so much he told her not to worry. Lisa had smiled, asked him how he could be so patient, did he have kids of his own? He'd left there with her number and the promise of date that coming weekend. 

Truth be told, he'd adored the kid from the start, and though he'd grown to care about Lisa a great deal, there had never really been a spark there, something that compelled him to seek out her company and no one else's. She'd grown on him with her easy smiles and her willing body, and he'd curled into it like a cat in a cardboard box, comfortable and not thinking too much about his surroundings; but maybe love doesn't have to be fireworks all the time. What he has with Lisa is easy, and it works. He loves Ben like he would a son, and he doesn't want to lose that. 

Cas is intriguing, surely, but that doesn't mean anything. He's just a weird puzzle Dean's trying to figure out. His only fascination is this thing he can't seem to put his finger on, and he tells himself that's all. Once he figures it out, he probably won't think about him so much.

*******

Sam asks Dean to come over again for another get-together the following Saturday, but after he declines twice Jess takes over, texting him relentlessly through all four days of his shift rotation. Now it's Friday evening and he's got two pies in the oven for tomorrow's barbeque. It's not that he didn't have fun at the last party, but he's pretty sure Cas will be there again and he's still not entirely sure what to make of him. 

He hears Lisa coming in the front door, toeing off her sneakers and stowing her yoga mat in the front closet before she follows the scent of pie into the kitchen. 

"Oh my," she says, "did you start these as soon as you got off shift?" She comes over and gives him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek before moving to the sink to wash her water bottle and put it on the drainboard. He hasn't seen her since Monday morning, before he left the house to visit Jess and then head in for his rotation, but he realizes now that it hardly registers for him that they've been apart for four days. 

"Uh, no, I took a nap first, got started on these around three," he says, taking a seat at the kitchen counter. She leans against the sink, and they ponder one another over the granite counter before Dean sighs.

"How long have we been like this?" he asks, and she shrugs before coming to sit across from him. 

"Almost always, I think. Maybe not so much in the beginning, when everything was new, but otherwise...yeah. I'm not saying it's been bad, because it hasn't. We get on well together, and everybody in this house is content. It's just..." she looks down at the counter, drawing idle circles on it with a fingertip, "do you wonder if this is what a relationship is _supposed_ to be like? That you care a great deal about each other but it's more like you're buddies?"

"I don't know, Lis. You're my first one."

"Yeah," she says, looking off into the den, a progression of thoughts written on her face but all of them a mystery to Dean, like they're in a language he doesn't speak. "I wonder about that sometimes, you know? I mean, don't you wonder what it was about me that changed you? Because I'm not fooled into thinking it was love at first sight. Or love at all."

"Lisa, you know that I love you. And Ben."

"Aha," she says, playfully wagging her finger. "I do know that. But I think you love us the same way, the way you love family, people you want to take care of." 

"I'm not having athletic sexual escapades with anyone else in my 'family' Lisa, ew." 

"Touché. But you're also a red-blooded American male, Dean, and I'm not completely tragic looking." He huffs a laugh at that, and she smiles before turning serious again. "I know you love me, of course you do. You're a good man, Dean, and I love you, too."

"But we're not _in_ love," he ventures, and she nods. 

"No, I don't think we are." They sit silently for a minute, and then the timer goes off and Dean gets up to pull the pies from the oven, steam escaping from his careful latticework over the tops as he sets them on racks to cool. He turns back to Lisa as he clears his throat.

"What do we do about this?" he asks, and she ponders for a minute.

"I think we need to figure out if this is all we want out of life, out of a relationship. We're comfortable, we get along, we love Ben...is that enough to build a happy life together? Or do we need...more?" She gets up from the counter and pats him on the chest as she heads upstairs, no doubt to shower and change while he thinks about what she's said.

He's still thinking about it as they lie in bed that night, listening to the soft sound of her breathing as she falls asleep, curled away from him in the bed as he lies with his hands behind his head and stares at the ceiling.

He spent a lot of time never getting close to anyone in his life, and then Lisa and Ben came along and he just folded himself into their space as if he'd always belonged there, and it's never been uncomfortable. _Is_ it enough? Is this what it means to grow up and have a responsible relationship, or is there more?

He finally manages to drift into a restless sleep, wondering what more there could be, and when he wakes in the morning he forgets dreaming about a strange being made of light.

*******

Once again, Sam sees Cas coming up the steps and opens the door with a flourish. 

"Is this the squash thing?" 

He can't help the grin on his face over Sam's transparent enthusiasm for cheesy goodness masquerading as health food.

"It is indeed squash casserole, you know I only do as I'm told, Sam."

"Yeah," he chuckles, "that makes two of us."

As Cas's feet move from plush carpet to tile, he sniffs the air. Something seems to already be in the oven, and it smells amazing. Placing his dish on top of the stove, he turns on the oven light and leans over to peer inside at a golden-crusted pie.

"Do you like blueberry?" says a voice behind him, and Cas startles, standing up abruptly with a gasp.

"Whoa, dude, calm down," Dean says, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "What is it about me that always makes you jump three feet in the air?"

"Maybe it's the fact that you're always sneaking up on me from behind?" he snarks before he can help himself..

They stare at each other for a beat, and then Dean starts laughing so hard he doubles over, and Cas can't help but smile. 

"Sorry! You startled me, is all. I was absorbed in the, uh, pie observation," he finally gets out, lamely.

Dean grins, coming over to clap Cas on the back. 

"It's OK man, I get absorbed in pie a lot myself. What'd you bring?" he says, peeking under the casserole lid.

"It's scalloped squash," Cas replies, and Dean abruptly stands up and firmly puts the lid back in place. "Not a fan of the squash, are you?"

"Anything vegetable shaped and remotely healthy, no." 

Cas chuckles a bit, patting Dean on the shoulder. 

"It's drowning in cheese, I think that negates any of the health benefits."

"Oh well, in that case sign me up."

"Great, another person to help you on your way to heart attack city," says Lisa as she comes in from outside, and Cas takes a step back.

"Oh, c'mon, Lis..." Dean pleads, and she rolls her eyes at him, grabbing napkins off the counter before she heads back outside. 

"Don't worry about her," Dean says, turning back to him, green eyes twinkling as he wiggles his eyebrows. "I'm in excellent health and she knows it."

"Right," Cas says, suddenly remembering his place and putting some space between them. "I'm going to go find Jess and see if she needs anything." 

He heads outside, grabbing a beer from the cooler by the door and looking for Jess, spotting her in the pool. He heads that way, losing his shirt on one of the lounge chairs and kicking off his shoes, placing his beer at the edge before he dives into the deep end. He closes his eyes under the water for a minute, revelling in the sensation. Underwater the muted voices sound almost like the host did when they were constantly in his mind, and the weightlessness of the water makes him long for his wings, those phantom limbs he can still feel but not use.

He breaks the surface, brushing his hair back from his face, wiping water that's not just from the pool out of his eyes, treading water as he drinks his beer until Sam calls out to everyone that food's ready. Vaulting out of the pool, he grabs a towel from the stack in the corner and wipes himself down, vigorously rubbing at his hair before heading back up onto the deck, towel draped around his neck. He helps himself to two cheeseburgers, loading them up with all the available accoutrements and getting a helping of his own squash casserole, grabbing a seat at the corner of the large outdoor table. He leaves his towel on the chair and goes to grab another beer, weaving through the dozen or so people that Sam and Jess have over with a nod at the ones he knows. 

He sits back down at his plate and takes his first bite of burger, closing his eyes to savor it with a moan when a shadow comes over him.

"Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about burgers, too," Dean says as Cas blinks up at him. He takes the empty seat next to him, taking a bite out of his burger as well before shoving a forkful of the squash casserole into his mouth.

"Mmmh, damn. This actually _is_ really, really good," Dean says, taking another forkful as Cas continues to stare at him for a bit before he finally remembers to keep chewing.

"I'm...glad you like it," he finally manages, trying to figure out why Dean is sitting next to him. He sees Lisa on the other side of the deck, chatting with a doctor named Matthew...something. "Did you bring a dish?" he asks, peering back at the table laden with food.

"Yeah, uh, I made the pie you were creeping on when you got here."

"Excuse me? I did not _creep_ ," Cas says with mock offense.

"Oh, you were definitely creeping," Dean shoots back with a grin, and suddenly everything seems easy again.

"I think you're trying to pass off grocery pie as something you made from scratch, you imposter. I do a lot of cooking _and_ baking, so I will be judging it harshly and looking for tell-tale signs of...of..."

"Store-boughtedness?" Dean helpfully supplies, raising his eyebrow in a challenge.

"That's not even a word...but you're on," Cas says, hurrying to finish everything on his plate. 

"Hey, I never actually said I'd let you have a piece," Dean says around a mouthful of food as he races Castiel to finish eating. Cas stops abruptly, swallowing his last bite of burger and looking distraught.

"But you said...you said _blueberry_."

"I did." 

"You cannot deny a man a piece of _blueberry pie_ , Dean, it's forbidden."

"Says who?"

"It is clearly listed under Article III, Subsection iv, paragraph (b) in the Rules of Pie Confederation: that when said pie is of the genus "blueberry" _all_ must be allowed to partake." 

"Oh, I see, you're one of those annoying rule-follower types," Dean says jovially, getting up from his seat with his empty plate as Cas follows close behind. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's fun to break the rules?"

"Not if it means I end up _without pie_."

"So you only follow them when it's to your benefit?"

"Is there another reason to follow rules?" 

They toss their empty paper plates in the large trash bag tied to a deck post before heading back into the kitchen, which feels cool and dim compared to the brightness of the California sun. Two pies are resting on wire racks on the counter, and Cas notices that they're in real bakeware, not disposable pie tins. He tilts his head at Dean, giving him an assessing look. 

"I suppose the question now is: do you look like the kind of man who would remove a pie from a throwaway tin and place it into a real pie dish for authenticity?" He steeples his index fingers together before his lips, staring at Dean who seems determined not to laugh. "All signs point to yes, I'm afraid." 

Dean shakes his head even as he giggles, opening drawers until he finds a knife and a server. He grabs a couple of paper plates and portions out a slice for each of them, handing one to Castiel with a fork and a flourish.

"I suppose I'll have to submit to the ultimate test upon your tongue," he says, and Cas misses the way he blushes to the roots of his hair because he's moaning around his first bite.

"I take back everything I said. This can only be handcrafted artistry," Cas says as he loads his fork with another piece.

"Good. I feel completely vindicated."

They eat in companionable silence, and Cas can feel the sensation of his grace reaching out, like a cat begging to be pet by a human that's indifferent to it.

"So," he says, suddenly feeling awkward in nothing but his swim trunks, alone in the kitchen with Dean. "Jess said you moved here about six months ago?"

"Goddammit, Dean, can't you even keep your hands off your own pie?" Sam interrupts as he sticks his head in the kitchen.

"Hey, someone accused me of _buying_ something fresh on my way here and I had to defend my honor!" Dean responds, one hand on his chest with the other raised up like a boy scout. 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leave some for the rest of the folks, would you? You need to come out and defend your _honor_ some more, Dean. Jess screamed 'cannonball!' about five minutes ago."

They all look at each other for a second before the three of them are off and running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find reference pics for this chapter here:  
> [Chapter 5 Reference](http://zaphodsgirl.tumblr.com/post/166123701252/at-one-point-i-did-several-hours-of-research-into)


	6. Enough

“I die each time you look away. My heart, my life, will never be the same. This love will take my everything -- one breath, one touch will be the end of me.” - _Love Song Requiem_ , Trading Yesterday

***

Dean spends the next month trying to think of a way to get to know Cas better, but it feels weird to ask a guy you don't really know if he wants to come out and play in a totally platonic, I'm-not-sure-what-this-is kind of way. Instead he takes every opportunity to stop and visit Jess at work, sometimes with cookies, sometimes with coffee, and he always brings something for Cas as well. Realizing how weird that must look he starts bringing enough for everyone, earning heartfelt thanks from Ellen each time and a pat on the cheek from Missouri, who usually gives him a knowing look that says she's not fooled by him at all.

Dean chooses to ignore this and not only inhabit the land of Denial, but dig himself a trench and get really good and comfortable. Ever since Ben got back from summer camp things at home have returned to normal, but there's a nagging voice in his head that points out to him that Lisa is right: they only ever talk when they're talking _with_ Ben, or talking _about_ Ben. All their other interactions are mundane, practiced conversations about what they want for dinner and whose turn it is to do the dishes, but when he's working on the Impala with Ben he resigns himself to the fact that this is just life, and it's what he has to accept if he wants to keep Ben in it. Something about that kid took root in his heart years ago and he doesn't know how to explain it, but the idea of walking out on him, just leaving one day because he and Lisa aren't riding the passion rollercoaster...he can't stomach the thought.

Which makes it difficult to understand why his thoughts are always full of Cas, the mystery man who reminds him so much of someone he doesn't think he's ever met. Maybe that feeling will go away if they get to know each other better. So Dean pops into the hospital whenever he can, looking for a way to get rid of this constant buzz under his skin that tells him to seek out Cas. 

He gets a golden opportunity when he buys movie tickets for a Thursday night that he has off.

_Dean: Hey, are you free Thursday night? Movies?_

He waits two hours for Sam to answer him before giving up and texting Jess instead, since Sam's probably tied up in court.

_Dean: Hey, can I borrow Sammy Thursday night for an action movie?_

_Jess: No can do, we've got dinner plans and then we're gonna get naked for hours after dessert._

_Dean: WAY more info than necessary._

_Jess: Lisa not into the action movies?_

_Dean: Nope, and thinks Ben's too young for this one._

_Jess: Why don't you ask Cas? He'll be off that night since I am, and he never does anything but sit around and read like an old hermit._

Dean doesn't even hesitate.

_Dean: Would it be weird if you gave me his number so I could just text him myself?_

He keeps his fingers crossed, and the next text Jess sends has a number and a thumbs up emoji. He diligently doesn't think about why he's grinning like a fool, and spends so much time trying to figure out what his first text should be that Victor asks him if he's trying to text something in Latin. It's impossible to do anything in the firehouse without somebody's smartass input, so he gives him the finger and finally just sends a few texts in quick succession. He tries to look nonchalant as he watches TV with the other guys, and he thinks he manages not to show any excitement when his phone goes off.

_Cas: Hello, Dean._

_Cas: Doesn't Lisa want to go?_

He doesn't realize as he's texting back that the TV has gone off and the other guys are staring at him until Benny clears his throat loudly from where he's leaning in the doorway. Garth is sitting with his chin in his hands, blinking at Dean with an adoring look on his face, Victor has a hand over his heart while he laughs at him, and Benny is standing, arms crossed, grinning at him as he moves a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

"What?"

"It's just so sweet, the way you look when you're texting your girl," Garth says, practically sighing. 

"You've got it bad, man. I get it, though, I've seen the goods, so good on you," Victor says, giving him two thumbs up.

"You plannin' on making that official anytime soon, there, brother?" Benny asks, and Dean suddenly feels like the biggest imposter in the world. 

"Uh, don't you guys have anything better to do?" 

"Aw, there's nothing on TV as interesting as your face, man. You'd think you were texting her for the first time or something."

"And I'm going outside, to the street, where there's privacy," Dean says, getting up from the couch and escaping out to the sidewalk as his phone buzzes again. 

_Cas: What time should I meet you at the theater?_

Dean had been planning to pick him up, but now he's uncomfortably aware that he's treating this like a date and he really needs to get his shit together before he gives Cas the wrong idea. 

_Dean: Movie starts at 7:30, meet you outside at 7? Concession will take a while._

_Cas: Of course, Dean._

He leans up against the warm brick at the front of the firehouse, banging the back of his head against it lightly, wondering what's wrong with him. He's never felt so affected by anyone he's ever met before, and he doesn't even know why. He'll be daydreaming about something and suddenly he'll think of those eyes, their color like the open ocean, and the mystery of Cas just as many fathoms deep. 

*******

Cas is standing awkwardly outside the theater looking at posters for upcoming attractions when he hears the rumble of an engine in the adjacent lot, turning towards the sound. It's a sleek, black muscle car, and as it passes by cruising for a spot he realizes that it's Dean behind the wheel, raising a hand to him in greeting. He actually hears when the engine cuts off, signaling that Dean's found a place to park, and Cas stands with his back to the lot so he won't be caught awkwardly staring as Dean saunters up to the doors.

In the months they met he's spent a lot of time comparing Dean to Fintan, though he knows he shouldn't. Their mannerisms are quite different, for one, and they have almost no physical resemblance at all. Dean is much taller, with a bow-legged gait nothing like the nimble grace of the man raised on the rocky cliffs of Ireland. He's fit and tan, muscular with striking facial features, and his hair is a dirty blonde. Fintan had been pale and lean, though certainly strong, body hardened by years of rough labor; his hair had been much redder, his face softer. Strangely they both have freckles, though Dean's pattern his face in a different set of constellations than those he spent years memorizing and centuries remembering, tracing them over and over in his mind.

Then there are the eyes. He has to stop himself from staring into them every chance he gets because he's sure they're _exactly_ the same, though he can't work out how. 

Now, as Dean stops next to him on the curb and smiles, he steals another look. 

"Sorry if you were waiting, I should have remembered parking would be insane. I should pick you up next time, just come in one car," Dean says idly as he turns to walk towards the entrance, and Cas mentally slaps himself for the way he'd perked up at the phrase _next time_. 

Dean shows the bored-looking girl behind the glass his phone, and after she scans the UPC code on it she hands them their tickets and a chart, highlighted with their assigned VIP seats, and they head in to stand at the long concession line.

"Man, I cannot wait for this. I saw the first one in the theater three times when it came out. That was back in Kansas, though, I haven't actually been to a movie out here yet," Dean says, reading the menu board as the line creeps forward.

"Well, I've only been to this theater once, and that was about a year ago," Cas shrugs. "I can't even remember what the movie was."

"That means either the movie was terrible, or the company was. Which one was it?"

"My, you are _very_ wise." 

"You're avoiding the question."

They move forward in line a little bit as Cas considers. 

"I don't think it was the movie, honestly."

"Aha! So bad date, then?"

"No, not really. Or maybe? Movies are a terrible idea for a first date, anyway. How are you supposed to actually get to know someone when you're sitting next to them for two hours in the dark, unable to have a conversation?" 

"I guess that's the kind of date you choose if you're not really good with that sort of thing," Dean replies, and Cas hears a little defensiveness in his voice.

"Perhaps I'm being unfair," he backpedals, wary of having offended Dean. "Maybe it's the best thing to do if you want to get to know someone, but don't know what to talk about. A way to initiate a shared experience that you can discuss later." He tilts his head, considering. "I think I've just realized that the bad company was actually _me_ in that scenario, then. Probably in every scenario. That is...unsettling."

"Been on a lot of movie first-dates, then?" Dean asks, teasing tone back in full effect, and Cas chuckles a little bit.

"More than I care to admit. There's always some well-meaning friend setting me up on a blind date with someone they know will be 'just perfect' for me, despite the fact that I beg them not to. Jess was actually the one who did it to me last, and it went so poorly that she's never tried it again."

"Maybe she should have listened when you told her you weren't interested." 

"Yes, well, you know Jess." Dean can't help but laugh, and by now they're finally at the register. They decide to split a large tub of popcorn once they agree they both like it loaded with butter and salt; Dean also chooses Twizzlers after loudly complaining that he prefers Red Vines, and Cas selects Whoppers. 

"Dude, what's with the grandpa candy?"

"You are a heathen. These are a _classic_. Don't even think about stealing one after you've spoken about them in that tone."

"Don't worry, I won't touch your malted milk balls," Dean says, waggling his eyebrows, and Cas can't help but giggle. They each get a soda as well before making their way into the theater, loaded down with concession booty, getting into their seats just as the lights dim and the previews start to roll.

"Yes, perfect timing!" Dean says in a low hiss, and that's the last thing he says for the next two and a half hours. 

As engrossed as Cas gets in the movie, he can't help the occasional glance at his companion from the corner of his eye. Dean watches with the rapture of a young child, utterly focused on the screen as he mindlessly takes handfuls of popcorn, and when something makes him smile his face is one of pure joy. He understands, now, the appeal of this as a first date, because he actually can't wait to talk to Dean about what they've watched. 

_It's not a date_ , he reminds himself, eyes to the screen again. _It will never be a date._ But it's comforting, sitting here in the theater with the soul he loves, and he thinks that might be enough.

*******

He and Dean start texting regularly after that night at the movies, and Cas finds an odd sort of small joy in these daily interactions. Sometimes Dean will just send him a message when there's down time at the firehouse and he's bored, other times he'll ask him a strange question out of the blue, and it will escalate to an in-depth discussion that can go on for ages, because one of them will get busy and not respond for hours, but then will pick up from where they left off like there's been no break in between.

 _Dean has Fintan's soul, but he is not Fintan,_ Cas reminds himself one morning after Dean has stopped by to visit, endearing himself to the entire team with a round of fresh coffees.

 _Dean doesn't see you that way,_ he scolds his heart when he realizes he's smiling at a text he's woken up to one morning.

 _That soul is not yours to love anymore,_ he thinks, as he sits on Dean's couch as they watch _The Hobbit,_ and Lisa leans down to give Dean a kiss on the cheek before heading up to bed.

_Dean has Fintan's soul, but **he is not Fintan**._

He repeats it to himself every night as he goes to bed, like counting sheep, but it doesn't help him sleep. He tries to see the two as separate entities, changing his nighttime mantra.

 _I am not in love with Dean, only the soul he carries within him_ , he repeats over and over, but it becomes harder to believe as time goes on. He enjoys spending time with Dean in a way he never had the chance to do with Fintan, interacting with him as an equal, a being on the same plane of existence. He enjoys the hours they spend talking about nothing of actual consequence, like the merits of Kraft Cheese Slices for burgers and whether or not Dr. Sexy has to visit a chiropractor regularly because of the lack of structural support a pair of cowboy boots affords in a punishing hospital environment. It's strange, but when he's with Dean he forgets that he's not actually _with_ Dean, and can never be.

At least, he forgets until he's lying in bed again, pushed up against the window with his bedroom curtains spread wide as he gazes at the ebon expanse of sky, pretending he's not confined to this room, this body, this life. Pretending the pinpricks of light are all his lost brothers and sisters, and that he is still among them, unhappy but still whole. He lies on his back, trying to fill his vision completely with the night, and imagines he can still fly.

Over the years, Cas has gotten better about hiding the weight he carries, all the secrets of his existence pressing upon him. It's easier when he's busy at work or surrounding himself with people, but here in the night there's nowhere to hide, no distraction to deflect with, and this is the part that's so much more difficult now that Dean is in his life. He catches himself wanting to tell Dean everything he holds secret: the span of years that encompass his existence, all the things he's seen, all the life he's lived but never felt alive for. 

"Hey, Cas!" he hears sharply behind him one day at work, startling him out of his reverie. He hadn't even realized Jess had been speaking to him.

"Sorry!" he replies sharply, sitting up and shaking his head to clear it.

"What's with you?" she asks, voice now full of concern. "You've been out of it a lot lately. Are you not sleeping well?"

 _No,_ he thinks forlornly, _I lie awake at night thinking about all the things I lost for the sake of something I'll never have again,_ but he swallows the words as they press against the back of his throat.

"Maybe not. I don't know."

She looks at him appraisingly, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He's known ever since he first came here that her powers of observation are astute. He had to use his normal cover stories much more quickly here than ever before, and he's been using the same ones for decades now. Usually it takes months for people to start to pry -- but it took Jess ten days, and she's difficult to resist when she wants to know something.

"You and Dean have been spending a lot of time together," she says carefully. And there it is.

"So? He's a friend. Same as you and Sam."

"Mm-hmm..." he hears behind him, this from Missouri, who is surreptitiously listening to their conversation while pretending to read a clipboard. He feels very exposed sitting here between the two of them, like the truth of his past is a color centerfold laid out for everyone to see.

"Cas..."

He rises from his chair, pushing past them and storming down the hallway, slamming open the door to the stairwell before he runs out of steam and just sits heavily on the top step, the sound of the metal door shutting behind him echoing through the space.

The step is hard and cold, something he's envious of, because if he could adopt either of those traits it would be easier to mask all the things he keeps inside; the drifting sense of loss he's always felt now magnified by his own self-condemnation. He is Tantalus, surrounded by something he wants desperately that will forever be out of his grasp.

Part of him had hoped that getting to know Dean would lessen the longing inside him, that it would help him separate the soul he fell in love with from the man he is today. He would feel it slipping away, and it would be sad and he would mourn the loss of it, but it would free him at the same time.

The truth is vastly different, for he feels so much _more_ than he did even when he was standing before the archangels and declaring his wish to live a human life. Being with Dean makes him feel whole, and even when he watches him interact with Lisa and Ben he feels a contentment mingled in with the pain of it, because Dean is loyal and caring and reminds Cas so much of his earlier incarnation. 

He knows he should leave all this behind, should take himself far, far away. He doesn't want to cause problems in Dean's life, but he knows he's on dangerous ground. He's not falling again, because he never really stopped. He was just suspended in mid-air for a while, and now the never-ending downward spiral continues and he can't see anything at the end for him but hard, hard ground.

Rubbing his hands over his face, he gets up from the step and makes his way back to his post, his stony expression enough to ward off any more prying questions. Jess looks at him with eyes full of concerned questions, but she doesn't ask them. At least, not yet.

It's when he's going over the discharge list that he sees a name that gives him pause.

_Megan Masters Miner._

It can't be. She would be, what, ninety years old now?

A check of the database confirms that's the age of the patient who has just been transferred to the local convalescent home, same date of birth that he remembers, but...how can it be, sixty-five years and half a continent away from where he last saw her?

A wave of guilt washes over him, remembering, because he understands now what he couldn't see for the five years he shared her bed: the pain of loving someone that's just out of reach.

*******

Dean knows he should talk to Lisa about what's going through his head, because it feels wrong not to, but he's not exactly sure what there is to tell her. 

_I'm attracted to Cas, but I don't want to lose Ben, so I'm hoping it'll pass?_

_I think I have a crush on Cas, but I'll get over it eventually?_

_I don't know if there's anything there for me to act on, so I guess we're just friends?_

Would he throw away his relationship with Lisa, risk never seeing Ben again, to take a chance at something he doesn't even know how to begin?

Dean finds himself testing the waters and hates himself for it, but not as much as he hates the way that Cas draws back from him every time it seems that an invisible line will be crossed. He'll realize Dean is standing too close for propriety's sake and move away, or if Dean makes a risqué comment that borders on flirtation he'll go quiet for a long time, seemingly uncomfortable. Cas only seems to want to talk about his most recent past since moving to California, and maybe a little about when he lived in Philadelphia before that, but anything else is like getting blood from a stone and it's maddening, because Dean feels like therein is the key that will unlock the mystery of Cas. 

He can't deny that he just enjoys spending time with Cas. He's funny and smart and Dean is determined to be glad he's made a new friend and not read more into it than what's there, not look for more than is allowed. Cas will submit to any movie marathon Dean suggests, and even Lisa will tease him about his willingness to watch anything Dean wants to, but the wide-eyed wonder on his face as he watches Indiana Jones punch Nazis is impossible to fake. He indulges Dean for hours of stupid text conversations during down time at the firehouse, he'll respond to weird questions with even weirder answers, and he keeps Dean firmly in check with an unfailing sense of decorum that never allows him to pretend they're anything but friends. 

Sometimes, when they're sitting in the diner after a movie, Dean tells stories about how he grew up on the road with Sammy and his dad. About weird places they've visited, or how hard it was taking care of a kid like Sam when he was just a kid himself. Cas always listens intently with no trace of judgement on his face, and never offers false platitudes as a means of comfort. He just _listens_. Dean wishes that sometimes Cas would _talk:_ about his past, about his family, about anything of consequence. Dean can't imagine what horrors must lie in his past when he's even more reticent to talk about it than Dean's ever been with his own. 

Sam always says _Dean_ has trouble talking about his feelings, using his words, but even he'd be flabbergasted by the phenomena that is Cas.


	7. Revelation

“When we die, we go into the arms of those that remember us.” – _Out of this World_ , Bush

***

The property he arrives at is pleasant enough to an outsider, but Cas knows better as he pulls into the lot, early on a Thursday afternoon. For the residents inside, this is just a holding place between the grand life they once lived and the longer residence that awaits them in Heaven or Hell, stuck in their degrading bodies while living vicariously in their memories.

The vestibule has that peculiar smell of disinfectant blended with air freshener, and he moves quickly through it into the lobby and up to the disinterested looking receptionist at the main desk to sign in. He walks down the tepid hallways to his destination holding a bouquet of bright yellow daisies, the dark green cellophane wrapper voicing its protest as he clutches them tighter and tighter. He hesitates for a moment just before he reaches the room, relaxing his grip and gathering his courage, and then places himself firmly in open doorway as he knocks lightly on the frame.

The room's occupant is in the only bed, the head of it up in a reclining position rather than supine. Even so, she has her eyes closed before she hears the knock, and as she turns to look at her unexpected visitor he sees the recognition cross her face and knows there's no turning back now.

"Hello, Meg," he says, moving into the room, coming around to the far side of her bed, opposite the machines she's hooked to and closest to the window. 

"Hello, Clarence," she replies, and despite the slack of her jaw from a stroke the smirk she gives him hasn't changed a bit, though her hair is now gray and her face lined with age. "Never thought I'd see you again. Certainly never thought you'd look exactly the same after, what, sixty some years? You've aged well. Do you moisturize?"

He pulls up a chair from the corner, placing the flowers on her bedside table before he sits to face her. 

"I was always bad with my skin regimen," she continues, "so if you confess to me that's all I had to do I'm going to be seriously put out."

"You seem spectacularly unaffected to see me like this," he says, tilting his head at her.

"Well, I was always pretty sure that you were an alien from another planet. On top of that it's hard to be surprised anymore when you're my age."

"Some things about you don't seem to have changed at all, either, you know." 

"All the best things about me were unsustainable, apparently. So my good looks finally faded and now I'm just a shell of sarcasm and bitterness."

He gingerly reaches out to stroke her fingers, and when she doesn't pull away he takes her hand. 

"I still think you're beautiful," he whispers, covering their joined hands with his other one.

"But it wasn't enough," she whispers back, gripping him tightly.

He bows his head, knowing she won't believe him if he lies.

"I've read Neil Gaiman, you know," she says suddenly. "Are you one of the old gods or the new?"

He actually chuckles despite himself, remembering how much he'd liked this about her, her ability to adjust on the fly with humor.

"Neither, sadly. It's hard to explain. You could say I was once old god adjacent, how about that?"

"I suppose it will have to do," she pouts. "Why did you suddenly decide to come find me? Surely you haven't been keeping tabs on little old me all this time."

"Maybe I have," he said, falling into their old flirtation as though they'd never ended, as though he hadn't come home one day to an empty apartment and a note that just said _I can't anymore_. "Had to make sure whoever finally tamed you was worthy."

"Who said I've been tamed?" she grins, and in his mind he sees her just as she was the day he'd met her in 1945, stepping off the train in her WAC uniform and giving him that look, one unruly dark curl escaping the confines of her hat, bouncing gently as she crossed the platform towards him like a tiger stalking prey, fresh-faced at nineteen and so beautiful that every head in the station turned as she passed. She could have had any one of them, and instead she set her sights on the one who could never give himself to her fully.

"I never wanted to hurt you, Meg," he blurts. "I never understood how _much_ it hurt you." His voice cracks a bit, but he doesn't drop his gaze, and she looks at him with undisguised pity.

"You understand now, don't you?" she asks, and he finally looks down at their hands as he nods, once. "When you're young, it seems noble, you know? To have a great, unrequited love for someone. You think it makes you superior, somehow, because you have the capacity for feeling that the other person doesn't. But it's a lie, that feeling. It's just the drug your body gives itself to numb it to the truth."

"The truth?" he asks, and for the first time she looks away from him to stare at the ceiling.

"You love so hard that you think eventually that feeling will seep into the other person. That if you hold onto them tightly enough, your love for them will spill over, will fill them up enough that they'll wake up one morning and realize they love you, too. The truth is that unrequited love is a mirror: you keep seeing something that isn't really there. Only your own love, reflected back at you." She looks at him again, squeezing his hand. "I started to feel so _empty_ , and I couldn't...I just couldn't stay."

His eyes are swimming as he reaches out to stroke her hair, brittle and silver now where once it was vibrant and dark, curling about his wrist as they lay twined together through the nights. 

"I'm so sorry," he whispers. "I wish it had been different." 

"It turned out the way it had to, I suppose. Clearly," she says, gesturing at his unchanged visage with her other hand, "it wouldn't have worked out between us. I had to settle for a mere mortal."

"I don't suppose we're expecting him anytime soon, are we?"

“Oh, he died years back. You know me, Clarence. I could never make a lifetime commitment to a man who could outlive me.” She smiles as she says it but her eyes stay somber, and he holds her gaze with an apology in his own for all the emotion he’d never been able to bestow upon her.

"You want to know a secret?" he says, and the spell is broken as she giggles like the girl she'd been when last he saw her.

"That's like asking a thirsty man if he wants water," she responds. "Old ladies _love_ gossip." He can't help but smile before he turns serious, nudging his chair closer to her.

"Can you guess how long I've been here, Meg?" he asks, but only gets a raised eyebrow in return. "Centuries. As in: more than one."

"Such a span of years, Clarence," she whispers. "There must be a litter of broken hearts in your wake."

"Not as many as you would have left in my place, surely," he grins at her. "You were the only one of all them who did the leaving, though."

She looks smug at that, and grips his hand tightly, giving it a tiny shake before pulling it towards her. He rises out of his chair, confused, as she pulls him closer she gestures for him to bend down so she can reach his ear.

"Can you help me leave now, Clarence?" she whispers softly, but he has no trouble hearing. "I'd hate to break tradition."

Cas pulls back sharply, but she grips his sleeve with surprising strength while she holds onto him with her other hand.

"Meg, I..." 

"Please. There's nothing left for me now except the _waiting_ , and I know exactly what I'm waiting _for_ , so it's excruciating. There's no one left to visit me, nothing for me to look forward to anymore. Something tells me you can put a stop to it." She releases him finally, and he stands abruptly, taking a few steps back, tears in his eyes and breathing hard. "Think of it as a long overdue parting gift." The smile she gives him can't hide the sadness in her anymore, the weary march of years on her soul -- but her gaze doesn't waver, and he knows he won't refuse. 

"Can I spend some time with you first?" he asks quietly, moving close to the bed again, and she closes her eyes as she hears the the submission that he doesn't voice. "We could talk for a while?"

"I'd like that," she says on an exhale. "I've got nothing but time. Why don't you tell me about you? The _real_ you? Help me understand."

He takes her hand as he sits again, kissing her gnarled fingers and holding them against his cheek for a moment before he talks, and tells her a tale that no other human soul has ever heard before.

It takes hours for him to reach the end of his story, and her grip on his hand never wavers until he tells her of meeting Dean, and then she clasps it tightly.

"You've had so much sadness, Clarence. Would it have made it better, had I stayed?" she whispers.

"If you had, we'd still be right here, in exactly the same place, and you would never have had any happiness of your own. I wouldn't have wished that on you." 

They regard each other in silence for a while, just absorbing the strange non-quiet of a room filled with machines meant to monitor life, to prolong it. 

"What will _my_ Heaven look like, do you think?" she asks as he runs a hand over her silver hair. "Is that even where I'll go?" 

"Oh, Meg. I have no doubt. It will look like your greatest desire, probably a place where you were happiest in life, with the people you love there."

She looks at him softly, her smile sad and wistful. 

"It will look like that lakeside cottage, then, she second summer we were together," she says decisively. "I still remember the color of the sunrise as it came up between the mountains, reflecting on the water. Such a peaceful place. I still dream about it, sometimes. I don't suppose that's a place you think of often, given everywhere you've been in your life."

"I remember all the places where I was happy, Meg."

She smiles a bit and sighs.

"Not _everyone_ I love will be there, Clarence."

He stands from the chair and bends over to kiss her on the forehead, a single tear rolling from her eye as he pulls away.

"Goodbye, Meg," he says, voice breaking a little as he reaches out to wipe it off with his thumb. 

"Thank you," she whispers before gripping his hand tightly. "Remember what I said about the mirror." She closes her eyes, and as he gently cups her cheek she breathes her last into his palm, nudged by his grace into the next part of her journey.

*******

Dean has been waiting at the theater for fifteen minutes, and Cas still hasn't shown. 

_Dean: everything OK? If you're running late I can grab whatever you want from concession._

He stands there a few more minutes but still doesn't get an answer, so he decides to go in rather than stand alone outside like he just got stood up. He buys an extra soda and the Whoppers that Cas likes along with the big tub of popcorn, and somehow manages to maneuver all of it into the theater by himself without losing a single kernel.

_Dean: figure you're still driving so I grabbed all the goodies. Just head to your seat when you get here, I got you covered._

There's still no response by the time the previews start, but Dean puts his phone on silent like a responsible theater-goer and just hopes Cas shows up before they end.

He doesn't, but Dean knows there must be a really good reason he's so late since it's never happened before. It'll be Cas's own fault if Dean manages to eat all the popcorn before he gets there.

Half an hour into the movie he surreptitiously checks his phone, but there's still nothing. It's 9:30 at night, and Cas should have been here an hour ago. Dean leaves everything on the seat next to him and goes out into the lobby, already dialing Cas's number before the door shuts behind him. 

It rings four times before the automated voice tells him what number he's reached and to leave a voicemail. He stands for a minute, thinking.

_Dean: you're not working tonight, right?_

He shuffles around in the vestibule while he waits for his phone to vibrate with a response. It takes nearly twenty minutes, and he's about ready to rip out his hair when it does.

_Jess: no, I'm off._

_Jess: why?_

_Dean: supposed to be at the movies with Cas but he hasn't shown_

_Jess: how late is he?_

_Dean: way over an hour now_

_Jess: that's not like him_

_Dean: I know_

_Dean: hasn't answered my texts, his phone goes right to vm_

_Dean: not gonna lie, kinda worried_

_Jess: Shit. We're at dinner right now, otherwise I could just go check on him._

_Jess: Now I'm worried, too._

_Dean: I'm going over there_

Dean abandons the theater completely, sending a silent apology to the ushers who have to throw out his stuff as he walks out into the dark parking lot and gets into the Impala without a backward glance. Pulling out of the lot is easy since none of the showings have let out yet, and he tries not to panic as he gets closer and closer to his destination. He breathes a brief sigh of relief twenty minutes later as he pulls onto the street and almost immediately sees Cas's car parked in the driveway, pulling in smoothly behind it. He shoots a text to Jess that Cas is home before he gets out and heads up the walk.

The entire house is dark as Dean approaches but he can faintly hear music, something classical, heavy with strings. 

*******

Cas gets home that night, puts on his favorite music, and sits on the floor to face the stereo. Seeing Meg again has brought everything into sharp focus for him, and he knows exactly what's been keeping him up at night. 

It's despair. 

He thinks about the inevitable outcome of the path he's on, what his life will be like in a year, two years, three, watching Dean from a distance while he burns with love for the soul within him. He's been fooling himself to think they can just be friends, because there's no denying for him that it always has been, and always will be, more. He realizes he loves _Dean_ , can't look at him as separate from his soul any longer; knows that they are one and the same, entwined with one another in his heart, forever.

The time has come to cut his losses. This is not the lifetime for them to know one another, and if not now, never. That soul has forgotten him, and who knows how many lifetimes it will take for Castiel to find it again? It certainly won't know him any better another century from now.

Gabe asked him to give it time, time for his soulmate to recognize its other half, and he thinks that time is done -- or else he'll spend his years like Meg, thinking he sees something that's nothing more than an empty reflection. 

He needs to leave. Go back to Europe, maybe, to one of the many places he still owns there, and just disappear for a while. Until he can forget, go back to the numb existence he had before he saw those eyes again, felt that thread of hope that had been dormant inside him flare to life and reach out.

The doorbell rings, and he suddenly becomes aware that he's been sitting on the floor in the dark for hours. He gets up slowly, and the bell rings again before he gets there.

"I'm coming!" he croaks, his voice sounding scratchy. He glances at the clock on the mantle before realizing it's too dark to see the hands.

"Cas?" The voice is muffled through the door, but he knows without a doubt who it is and opens up without looking through the peephole.

"Dean?" 

"Thank god!" Dean says, stepping across the threshold and wrapping his arms around Cas in a bear hug. "You scared the shit out of me! Where've you been?"

Cas pulls away, blinking up at him owlishly. "I've been here. Where am I supposed to be?" Dean looks at him with concern, still holding him by the shoulders.

"Dude, it's Thursday. You were supposed to meet me at the theater hours ago. I thought you were running late but...you weren't answering your phone, and then you never showed, and I've been calling you since I left. What's wrong?"

He remembers now that he was supposed to meet Dean, but he'd been stewing in his own thoughts since he'd left Meg and he'd lost track of time.

"Dean, I'm sorry, I...I don't know what happened. I forgot. What time is it?" Dean drops his hands.

"You...forgot? Cas, you never forget anything. It's like eleven at night! Tell me what's wrong."

He wants to, so badly. He wants to tell Dean everything that's wrong: what happened earlier today, how much he wants him, what they once were to each other -- but he realizes no matter what happens between them, he'll never be able to. How can he tell him that story and have him believe? And what a weight to put at someone's feet, the burden of knowing so much sacrifice happened in your name?

 _This has always been impossible_ , he thinks, and then Dean snaps his fingers in front of him.

"Cas? Are you with me?"

"I'm sorry!" he says, shaking his head, trying to be present. He realizes the only light is coming from the still open door, so he moves past Dean to flip on a light switch before he closes it. "Dean, I'm sorry I made you worry. I had a...trying day today."

"Hey, let's sit down, okay? You don't look so good." He lets Dean lead him back to the couch, and as he sits Dean perches on the coffee table across from him, their knees brushing against one another. "Tell me what happened." 

"I...got some news today. About an old friend. She...she died." It's only part of the truth, but it's certainly not a lie.

"Oh, Cas. I'm sorry." Dean says, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. "Was it a very close friend?" 

"Once."

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose as he exhales loudly. "When did you get this news?"

"This afternoon."

"Why didn't you call me?" Dean asks.

"Dean, I'm sorry I forgot about the movie, I just..."

"Cas, this isn't about the movie! I don't care about the movie, I care about _you."_ Cas inhales sharply, despite knowing not to read more into that phrase than is there. "Do you want to tell me about her? Is she...is she the reason you don't date?"

It gives him the opportunity to tell a plausible enough story, so he nods, and Dean signs.

"I'm going to bet you haven't eaten today, so how about this: let's put some shoes on you, and we'll go down to the diner and get you fed, and you can tell me all about...?"

"Meg."

"Meg. Okay?" Cas nods, and Dean gets up for a minute before coming back to hand Cas his shoes. "C'mon man, it's gonna be okay."

They don't speak again until they're seated in a booth at the diner two blocks over, which doesn't have any other customers except a couple of people sitting at the counter furthest from them. Dean orders coffee and food for both of them when Cas doesn't even open his menu, staring out the window as the waitress takes their order.

"You must have loved her a lot, huh?" Dean finally says, drawing Cas's gaze to him after the waitress leaves. 

"I...didn't actually. That was the problem. I mean, I cared about her deeply, but it wasn't in the way she wanted. She finally left, and I never saw her again." _Until today_. "It always upset me to think about how much it must have hurt her, being with me and knowing I didn't feel things as deeply as she did."

"How long were you together?"

"About five years, back when I lived in Chicago." 

"When was that?" 

_1950_ , Cas thinks. "A long time ago now."

"Right," Dean says, nodding, then leaning back as their waitress returns briefly with their coffee. "I'm sorry about your loss, Cas."

Cas looks pensive as he stares out the window, looking past his own reflection into the dark parking lot. "It's not my first."

"You lost someone else?" Dean asks hesitantly, as if he's afraid to upset him even more.

"Long before Meg, there was...someone, yes. The _only_ one. I lost him and...no one has ever been able to take his place." He stares into the coffee cup in front of him, biting his lip, keenly aware of the thing he lost sitting across from him now, terribly out of reach. "Meg tried harder than anyone, though. She deserved better."

"Do you...do you want to tell me about her? She must have been pretty great."

Cas smiles, because yes, she really was. He did enjoy being with her for as long as it lasted, because she was fiery and surprising and so full of _life_ in a way that he wanted to be, so much. He'd thought then that if anyone could make him forget about the soul sitting in front of him, it would be her. He starts to talk, carefully avoiding anything that would give away his secret, and finds there's still a lot that he can say. 

Outside the diner it starts to rain, drops hitting the glass outside and streaking neon as Dean hears all about the enigma that was Meg Masters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find reference pics for this chapter here:  
> [Meg as a Wac](http://zaphodsgirl.tumblr.com/post/166123702507/castiel-originally-meets-meg-at-the-very-end-of)  
> and here:  
> [The Look of Heaven](http://zaphodsgirl.tumblr.com/post/166123721287/meg-imagines-what-her-heaven-might-look-like-a)


	8. Realization

“Without your love my life ain’t nothing but this carnival of rust.” – _Carnival of Rust_ , Poets of the Fall

***

Hearing Cas talk about his life with Meg, seeing the joy that lights his face as he remembers the time they shared together, changes something in Dean. He's never seen Cas talk so passionately about anything as he does about this period of his life, and it lights a fire in him not only to know more, but to inhabit Cas's life in the same way. He remembers too well how Cas felt in Dean's arms as he hugged him, how much he wanted to go into the house with him after dropping him off, how he wanted just to hold him close and see him through this. He doesn't want to be _friends_ with Cas -- he wants to be more, and he can't deny it any longer.

He just doesn't know what to do about it. 

When he wakes up late on Friday, Lisa has already left the house, and since Ben is back in school now there's nothing to intrude on his thoughts. 

He feels closer to Cas after last night than he ever has before, and the way he talked about Meg put a light in his eyes that Dean could get drunk on. It's almost as though he'd let go of the careful control he seems to always be under when he's with Dean, as if he's afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. Dean wants to know why he's like that, what's made him this way, why he can't ever seem to let go of it. 

_I lost him and...no one has ever been able to take his place._

_Him_ , Cas said, and Dean latched onto that pronoun hard without thinking twice about it. He knows he and Cas are the same age, but sometimes the way he talks makes it sound like he's so much older, an elderly man recounting the stories of his youth. Maybe that particular tale is just part of the pain that shaped Cas into who he is now, someone reluctant to revisit the past and so careful with what he says about it.

Dean wanted to know more about the man he'd lost, but it would have been tactless to ask about that given the circumstances. Now though, in the late morning light, he stares at the ceiling and wonders if that's the key to everything, and how he can find out. He grabs his phone from the nightstand, planning to text Cas and check on him, but he changes his mind.

 _You free any night this weekend?_ he sends to Sam, and is actually a little surprised when he gets an answer within ten minutes.

_Sammy: Tonight work for you? You want to come over when I get done? Jess is working._

_Dean: perfect, be there at 7_

There are only two people in the world Dean is comfortable talking to about this, and _comfortable_ is probably stretching the truth. Though he'd prefer Jess because it would be less embarrassing, she's close friends with Cas. Sam is, too, truth be told, but he'd never put party before country, so to speak. He knows Sam will help him to make sense of all his jumbled thoughts, analyze and dissect them and put them back together in a way that will help him decide what to do.

_Dean: gonna head to Sam's later tonight, about 7?_

_Lisa: that's fine, I'll be home before._

He lies in bed with his phone on his chest for a few minutes, thinking, then biting his lip as he decides. 

_Dean: hey, how are you today?_

He's not sure Cas will be up yet, so he puts the phone aside and heads into the shower, but there's still no response by the time he gets out and gets dressed, then goes downstairs to make some coffee. 

It's when he's mindlessly watching Netflix some time later that he finally gets a response.

_Cas: I'll be okay, Dean. Thank you for yesterday. I'm sorry again that I gave you cause for alarm._

_Dean: Don't worry about me, ok? Let me worry about you._

He's gone too far, he thinks, especially when it takes fifteen minutes before he gets a response, during which he pauses Netflix and just stares at his phone in anticipation.

_Cas: Why would you?_

_Dean: because you're my friend, Cas. Probably my best friend._

He wants to tell Cas that he’s so much more, but he knows it’s not the right time.

_Dean: Friends let their friends take care of them when they're hurting._

_Cas: I don't know how._

A feeling of protectiveness surges through Dean as he reads that.

_Dean: You will. I'm here for you, and I'm not going anywhere._

Another fifteen minutes go by before he gets an answer.

_Cas: Thank you, Dean._

Dean doesn't hear from him again that morning, so he puts the phone down and finds ways to keep himself busy for the rest of the day before he heads to Sam's. He makes a grocery store run, resolved to show up at the house and cook for the both of them. His words flow more freely when his hands are busy and half his brain is occupied with something else, and because he thinks he'll need it afterwards he gets the ingredients for peach pie. 

He gets back just before Ben comes home from school, and sets up the kitchen to bake. He hears the brakes of the school bus outside half an hour later, and then Ben clatters in the front door, dragging his backpack into the kitchen with him as though the world weighs heavily upon his shoulders the way it only can with a ten-year old.

"Hey buddy! Want a snack while you do your homework?" Dean says brightly, and Ben sighs as he hauls his backpack up onto a chair, then takes the seat next to it across the counter from Dean as he nods. Dean makes him a peanut butter and banana sandwich, drizzling a little honey over the slices of banana before he puts the pieces together, and sets it in front of him with a glass of milk. 

"Thanks D!" Ben says gleefully, taking a huge bite of his sandwich as he regales Dean with the trials of his day, then fishes out his homework. Dean puts the pie together, then whips up something light for Lisa and Ben’s dinner after he puts it in the oven to bake. Lisa gets home at 6:00, putting her yoga mat into the closet and coming into the kitchen to kiss each of them on the cheek before going upstairs to shower, not actually saying anything. 

Ben stares after her with an odd look on his face, then glances up at Dean.

"Mom's been weird lately," he says.

"What do you mean, _weird_?" 

"I dunno," he shrugs as he doodles in his notebook. "Like she's not paying attention to anything? Like she's here, but she's thinking about somewhere else?"

It gives Dean pause. He hasn't noticed anything odd about Lisa, but as he searches his memories of the past few weeks he doesn't think Ben is wrong -- just that Dean himself is unobservant. He stares at the top of Ben's head as he bends diligently over another math problem, and wonders what he observes about Dean, because the same is probably true. He can't help the twinge of guilt he feels at that, and he ruffles the kid's hair just as the timer goes off, alerting him that he has to take the pie out of the oven. 

Lisa comes down twenty minutes later, fresh from her shower, damp hair twisted up into a clip. Ben has already set the table for the two of them, and as Dean sets down their plates she thanks him with a soft smile but then only talks to Ben for the rest of their dinner, not addressing him until he's getting ready to leave.

"Think you'll be as late as you were last night?" she says brusquely, not looking at him, and he realizes suddenly how things look from where she's sitting.

"Sorry, it was a bad night," he says softly, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Cas never showed at the movies, and I panicked and went to his house. Turns out an old friend of his died unexpectedly, and he was pretty torn up." 

He can tell from the expression on Lisa's face that she was expecting a completely different narrative, or a deflection while Ben was in the room. "I got him out of the house, took him to the diner, got him talking about her. Ex-lover that didn't work out, but he cared about her a lot, you could tell from how he talked about her."

"Dean, that's...please give him my condolences when you see him next," she says, looking contrite, and he kisses her on the forehead before he grabs his keys and heads out the door.

*******

Dean places a six pack of beer and the pie on Sam's stoop, knocking on the door before going back to get the groceries, returning in time for Sam to open the door.

"Damn, Dean, what's all this?" he asks as he grabs the beer and pie, still in his suit and tie from work. "I just got home, so let me go change and then I'll help you with whatever," he says as he puts the pie in the counter and the beer in the fridge before he disappears upstairs.

Dean's as familiar with Sam's kitchen as he is their own, so he just starts with vegetable prep, cutting tomato wedges and washing lettuce before Sam comes back down, more relaxed in a pair of worn jeans and a threadbare t-shirt. He grabs a beer for each of them from the fridge, opening them with the tail of his shirt before tossing the caps on the counter. 

"Can I do anything?" Sam asks, but Dean waves him off and just motions for him to sit on one of the bar stools opposite the prep counter. "So what's the occasion?"

Dean keeps chopping diligently for a minute, trying to decide where to start.

"What do you think about Lisa?" he finally asks, choosing to flank the topic.

"Why do I think this really isn't about Lisa?" Sam challenges, and Dean just shrugs in response. "Do you really want to know my opinion of Lisa as a person, who is great, or my opinion of your _relationship_ with Lisa?"

"See, this is why I came over. Because you always understand what I'm trying to say, even when I don't." 

"Alright. I think Lisa is a wonderful woman, warm and sweet, smart as a tack. I think she's been really good for you, because you never let yourself be put in a position of vulnerability with anybody, ever, until you met her. I think you spent most of your life not letting anybody get close, because you saw what it did to dad when he lost mom. Right?" He doesn't wait for an acknowledgement from Dean, he already knows the answer. "I think after you met Lisa and Ben, you could start to see what was so great about having someone in your life to share it with, and stopped thinking so much about the _what if._ It makes me happy, to know that you can get to that place." Sam hesitates, drinking from his beer.

"But?" Dean prompts, raising an eyebrow as he pan sears chicken.

" _But_ , and this is no reflection on you or Lisa as individuals...I don't know that you should end up together. Not every relationship is the _one_. Some of them you get into because you're lonely, or because you want something at the time but maybe you don't later, which are terrible reasons for being with another person. Sometimes you get into it for what seems like the _right_ reason at first, but might still be the wrong choice in the end. Such as: you've taken a shine to a really cool kid, and his mom is also gorgeous and flirtatious and a lot of fun, and it's a comfortable, easy place to get into."

"Yeah," Dean agrees, "it is."

"But maybe not such an easy one to get out of," Sam suggests, and that's the crux of the matter. 

"Should I want to get out of it, though?" Dean says, turning over the meat. "Like you said, it's comfortable. There's caring there, for sure. We don't fight, we don't treat each other badly, there's mutual respect and love. I love Ben like he's my own. So why should I leave it?"

"Is that what you're worried about? That you'll break it off with Lisa and she and Ben won't be in your life at all anymore?" Sam asks, and Dean just nods. "Dude, Lisa has a great head on her shoulders. If you sat her down and talked to her just like this, I don't think it would happen. I think she'd still let you see Ben, and you'd probably still stay friends, even if it's awkward for a while. Most relationships end because people let things deteriorate to the point where they hate each other, because they'd rather be with _anybody_ than be alone. If you pulled a dick move, like cheating on her, then you could definitely kiss them both goodbye forever. I can't see you letting it get to that point."

Dean nods as he turns off the stove, putting together a plate and setting it in front of Sam. He grabs them fresh beers and then moves around the counter to sit next to him while they eat.

"I've been feeling...conflicted," Dean finally says, and Sam nods.

"Because you thought you were happy with Lisa?"

"I did. I mean, I am? But she said some things a few months ago, and I haven't been able to get them out of my head. Hinting at some of the same things you said, about us being stagnant, comfortable. I can't seem to figure out what to do about them. I feel guilty, most of the time."

"Because your relationship isn't heading for happily ever after? That doesn't make either of you a bad person, Dean."

"No, because...because I never thought about the status of my relationship until..." but he doesn't know how to put it into words.

"Until you found something else that you wanted?" Sam asks sadly. "Dean, I hate to ask this, but: are you cheating on Lisa with Cas?"

"No!" Dean says, taken aback, "no, of course not! I am not sleeping with Cas, Sam."

"Oh," he says, blinking rapidly and think crinkling his brows in confusion. "I'm sorry. I thought, well. Never mind what I thought."

Dean sighs loudly, exhaling through his nose in frustration. "No, you probably thought right. Because I think about Cas. A lot."

"Oh!" Sam replies, looking down at his plate as he moves an errant tomato around on his fork. "Is that why you're conflicted about Lisa?"

"I feel like I'm conflicted about _everything_ ," Dean says in exasperation, getting up to take their plates. "Seconds?" he asks, but Sam demurs so he rinses their plates off in the sink before leaning back against the counter to face his brother. "I feel like my life with Lisa and Ben is a gift, and I should figure out how to appreciate what I have, because not a lot of people get that, to have someone like her in their life. She said we love each other but we're not _in_ love, so is it fair to her for me to stay if I don't feel like I'll ever get there with her? What if she misses out on being with the person who _can?_ " 

Sam looks at him, calculating, finishing his beer and gesturing for another. Dean obliges, getting the last one for himself, as Sam scratches at the label on his bottle while he thinks of what to say.

"Do you feel like _you're_ missing out on that person?" he asks softly, and Dean puts his face in his hands. 

"I don't know," he says, voice muffled against his palms before he stands up straight. "I have no idea if Cas sees me that way at all, but I can't stop thinking about him. There's something about him, ever since the day we met -- like an itch under my skin that only gets scratched when I'm with him, but I feel like every time I take a step closer he takes a step back. I don't know if that's because he's chivalrous or because he's not interested, and it makes me feel like shit to think about walking out on Lisa to take a chance on something that might not even be there." He takes a gulp of his beer, throat dry after that speech, before he leans with his back to the stove, turning his profile to Sam, who's looking down at his hands.

"I know these seem like the same issue, but they're actually not," Sam finally says. "We need to look at them separately. You and Lisa both acknowledge that your relationship is all substance but no real spark. Right?" Dean nods. "Then you need to address that first, because that's what's fair to her. To both of you. Only when you're free to include someone else in your life should you consider the other. It shouldn't matter whether or not he feels the same way about you, because the relationship issue with Lisa exists _regardless_ of whether or not a future with Cas does."

It seems so simple put into those terms, or at least the argument does if not the actual act. Severing anything isn't easy, no matter how amenable everyone is to the eventuality.

"Okay then," Sam says quietly. "That problem is solved, and you need to sit down and talk to Lisa about it sooner rather than later. So tell me about the Cas problem."

"I think I'm out of my depth. I've never been in a relationship with a guy before."

"Well, you've never been in a relationship with anyone except Lisa."

"Point. Actually, I wasn't sure whether or not he swung that way until last night."

"You've been friends for months and you've never talked about exes or anything?" Sam asks, surprised. "Wait, what happened last night?"

"Not whatever you're thinking! He's cagey as hell about his past, practically _never_ talks about it," and Dean explains the night before, the panic he felt when he couldn't reach Cas, followed by the relief mingled with pity when he knew the reason. "He mentioned that he'd lost someone else before Meg, someone he never got over, and that's why she finally left."

 _Long before Meg, there was...someone, yes. The_ only _one. I lost him and...no one has ever been able to take his place._

"Shit," Dean says out loud, and at Sam's quizzical look he shakes his head. "He said the guy died, and no one has ever been able to take his place. What if that's why he always holds himself at a distance? I mean, who am I to think I could replace him either?"

"Or maybe," Sam says in his most reasonable tone, "he holds himself at a distance because he knows you have a _live-in girlfriend_ and he's not that kind of a guy."

"He's definitely not," Dean agrees with a sigh.

"So," Sam says, clapping his hands and rubbing them together before he puts his elbows on the counter and rests his chin on his fists. "We've established the need to get _out_ of a certain situation before you get _into_ another one. But there's still pie to eat, so cut us a couple of pieces and let's dish about your crush. Jess won't be home for _hours_." Dean can't help but laugh, because sometimes his brother is worse than a teenage girl. 

*******

He and Sam eat most of the pie, sitting at the counter while Dean tells Sam everything he can think of about Castiel. There are a few things that Sam knows as well, either from talking to Cas himself or from what Jess has told him.

"She took a shine to him right away when he started working there. He was very quiet and reserved at the beginning but she had a feeling about him, that he had hidden depths. It took a few months before he finally opened up with her, got comfortable enough that she managed to get him over here for dinner."

"I'm surprised she didn't convince him to cook for you guys, too," Dean says, chuckling. 

"She convinced him to bring dessert, which was amazing, and I'd be lying if I said he didn't cook for us after that. He's probably even better in the kitchen than you are, and that's saying something," Sam replies, shoving Dean's shoulder a bit. "But what he said to you, about having lost someone before? He's told Jess as much, although never any of the details. She was trying to fix him up with someone for the longest time and he kept brushing her off about it, but you know how she is."

"Yeah. He mentioned that he'd been on a date in the same theater where we went to our first movie together, and that it was her doing. He said it didn't go well."

"Oh yeah. Some woman from the maternity ward that Jess knows, very nice lady. She told Jess later that he was very distant the whole night, polite but withdrawn, and she got the feeling he would rather have been anywhere else. Jess felt awful for her and got kind of mad at Cas, too, the way you get when you feel like you've done someone a favor and they're ungrateful. So she grilled him about it during their next shift."

"I can't even imagine how that went."

"He basically told her that if she didn't like how he acted on the date, then maybe she should refrain from forcing him to go on them in the future. She was a little taken aback at first, but didn't stop pressing."

"Shit, I feel bad for Cas, now. She's like a secret service agent when she wants to know something. Calmly terrifying in a way you know you're going to crumble to eventually. I still remember how quickly she got out of me that I was going to move out here even though I wanted it to be a surprise."

"Well, it _was_ a surprise to everyone else, since she didn't tell a soul," Sam chuckles, a fond look on his face as he thinks about the tiny blonde terror that is his wife. "He eventually confessed that he'd been in love many years before. Something about knowing his feelings were returned, but there were reasons they couldn't actually be together. Jess thinks maybe Cas's family disapproved because it was a man, and did everything to keep them apart. The gist she got was that they sent Cas away somewhere, and while he was gone the guy died. She thinks it broke him, and then he cut ties with his whole family. He does have a brother that he still keeps in touch with, though they don't see each other much; we've never met him and we're probably the closest friends Cas has here. Jess thinks the reason he's always moving from place to place is because he doesn't want to get close to anyone like that again, afraid of getting attached to someone just to lose them."

"Shit," Dean says, looking down at this now empty plate, though it's been graced by two pieces of pie at this point. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to compete with that, Sam."

"Dean, don't think about that yet. There's a lot still that you don't know about Cas, and maybe you never will. But you'll never get the _chance_ to know if you don't put yourself in a position to try."

Dean nods, because Sam is right, and that was the reason he came here after all. He heads out as soon as Jess walks in the door after her shift, clapping Sam on the back and giving Jess a hug goodbye and a kiss on the temple.

"Make sure you have some pie before bed; I made Sammy's favorite and he'll probably finish it for breakfast. There's leftovers from dinner in the fridge, too." 

"Seriously, Dean, you really could phone it in to be best brother-in-law at this point."

"Nope, I want to ruin you for all time," he says, shutting the door behind him on her laugh. 

It's well after midnight when Dean gets home, stealing quietly into the house so as not to wake Lisa and Ben. He creeps up the stairs and peeks into Ben's room to assure himself he's sleeping peacefully before heading down the hall to his own bedroom. To his surprise Lisa is still awake, sitting up in bed and watching Netflix.

"Hey, I didn't think you'd still be up," he says quietly, heading into the bathroom to brush his teeth, then coming out to change into sleep clothes as she pauses her show.

"Wasn't really tired yet, couldn't seem to nod off so I thought I'd binge watch something. Did you have a good time at Sam's?" she ask as he gets into bed, and as she curls into him he realizes that it's been weeks since she's done this. He places an arm around her shoulders out of habit. 

"Yeah, I made grilled chicken fajita salad for dinner, and we polished off a six-pack before we attacked the pie." 

"I saw that you made him peach. You must have wanted something from him."

"Why do you say that?" he asks, and she leans her head back to gaze up at him.

"It's his favorite. You always make him peach pie when you need a favor, even though he'd never refuse you anything."

"Huh. I guess I never realized that before. Do I do that for everybody?" 

"You totally do. Pecan for Jess, and you used to make rhubarb for Bobby. Blueberry is for when you want to impress, like the first barbecue we went to at Sam's house." Dean chuckles a little, because she's absolutely right, and this is one of the things that has always made them so easy together -- the subtle traits they observe about each other, like the way he knows she's worried about Ben's grades when she starts packing extra things into his lunch and feeding him carrots and peanut butter as a snack, but doesn't criticize him outright because she thinks making him self-conscious about it will have a negative effect.

"So, what was the favor?" she asks, but the words catch on his tongue, because she's tracing the skin above his waistband with the tips of her fingers, and it's another thing he knows about her, a tell: this is how she initiates sex. 

"Lis," he says gently, reaching down to grasp her hand. "I don't think that's a good idea." 

"And why is that?" she says a little sharply, pulling back to look at him. "We haven't been together in _weeks_ , Dean." He fumbles for how to answer, because he's just come to terms with knowing they need to talk about things but hasn't figured out _how_ to talk about them yet, and his silence gives her the wrong impression. She pulls completely away from him, almost to the edge of the bed, and sits up against the headboard.

"If there's something you need to tell me, you better do it now." 

"Can we talk about it in the morning?" he asks quietly, keeping his voice even, but it seems to confirm all her worst fears.

"Jesus Christ. When you were out late last night I thought...but then you said...but now..."

"Lisa!" he says firmly, trying not to raise his voice. "I'm not cheating on you. I never have. That's not what this is, I swear it!" He sits up himself, turning to face her. "This is what I needed to talk to Sam about. About all the things you said to me a few months ago. You wanted me to think about it, and I have been. I just wasn't able to make sense of everything I thought, so I asked him to help me." 

She takes a few deep breaths in and out, as though she's on the verge of tears and trying to control it.

"Lisa, you were right about so many things you said, and I'm sorry it took this long for me to figure it all out for myself, but I have, okay? And I will tell you all about it in the morning, I promise. But until we talk I don't think it's a good idea to do _that_." He can't bring himself to, now that he's sure he has feelings for Cas, because Lisa deserves better than to be touched intimately by a man who has someone else on his mind. "Hey, c'mere," he says, opening up his arms, and after a minute she moves into them, wrapping her arms around him in a fierce hug, and he threads a hand into her hair, cupping her head. "Why don't we go to sleep, huh? I promise we'll talk about everything in the morning." 

He feels more than sees her nod against him, and she moves away to grab the remote and turn the TV off. She hesitates in the dark, but he reaches out to touch her arm, and she gravitates into his body heat again, laying her head on his chest as he strokes a hand down her back.

Both of them lie wide-eyed in the dark for a while, lost in their own thoughts and the curiosity of what the other one will say in the morning, but eventually they each drift off to sleep.


	9. Leaving

“I have a tale to tell, sometimes it gets so hard to hide it well. I was not ready for the fall, too blind to see the writing on the wall.” – _Live to Tell_ , Madonna

***

Dean wakes up later than usual the next morning, after Ben has left for a friend's house, and he's grateful because he and Lisa are bound to be awkward with one another this morning. He lays on his back for a few minutes, massaging his eyes and trying to figure out what he's going to say to her. So many things are twisted up inside him and he doesn't know how to put them all to words, but it's going to happen this morning whether he's ready or not. It's not an easy task to rise from the bed, get dressed, and head downstairs, following the smell of bacon.

Lisa's sitting at the breakfast bar, eating granola and yogurt while reading something on her tablet. She glances up as he comes in and gives him a tight smile before going back to whatever she's reading, not speaking while he makes his coffee and grabs the plate of bacon waiting for him on the counter. He slides into a seat across from her with a mumbled thanks, and she slides her tablet off to the side.

"So," she begins, taking her bowl in one hand and her spoon in the other, cradling it to her chest like it's a comfort. "Is there a confession you need to make?"

"I'm not cheating on you. I know that's what you think, but I haven't been sleeping around, I swear it." He munches on a piece of bacon, trying to buy himself some time but she seems content to wait patiently for him to continue. "I was confused about a lot of things for a while, I think. I needed some time to get my head back on straight, that's all."

"Confused about what? About me?"

"No, no, that's just it, it's..." he sighs, resting his elbows on the table and leaning his forehead on his clasped hands. "I'm not confused about you, or Ben. My feelings for you both haven't changed, that's not it." She fiddles with her spoon for a moment before setting the bowl down and pushing it to the side as well.

"You have feelings for someone else, don't you? Even though nothing is happening with them. That's why you're confused." He rubs his hands across his face, because he knows he's been avoiding this problem, trying to ignore it in the hope that it goes away, and now Lisa's said aloud the thing he couldn't even admit to himself until recently.

"I didn't do it on purpose. I don't know how it happened, I'm not even sure what it is."

"And nothing's going on between you?" she asks timidly. 

"Nothing's happened, but...I may have been trying to push the envelope, see if I could get a reaction, figure out if there was something there. It's never yielded anything except guilt for me." He pushes the bacon away because his stomach feels full of lead. "You should know that he's never come on to me or reciprocated any advance I've made, I swear. In fact, if I do anything that seems like it crosses a line, he pulls away, fast. He's done nothing wrong, ever."

" _He_ ," she says. "Cas." There's no waver in her voice at all as she says it, and when he nods she closes her eyes for a moment, like it's confirmation of something she already knew but never voiced.

Lisa gets up from the table to take her dish to the sink, and she stands there for a moment looking out the window but not speaking. Dean has nothing more to say, so he waits.

"Last night. Well, for much longer than that, actually...I could tell your mind was somewhere else. On some _one_ else."

"Lis..." he begins, but she turns around before he can finish, casually leaning her elbows on the edge of the sink.

"I asked you months ago to think about why we're really together, especially once Ben came home. Did you think of an answer?"

"What?" he asks, completely thrown off by the question. She pushes herself off of the sink and comes back to sit across from him again, leaning into her crossed forearms on the table. 

"I meant all the things I said back then, but you never brought it up again, and I thought maybe...well. I care about you, Dean, and I know you care about me. I know you love me and Ben both, I do. But sometimes...I wonder. If we're together because we care enough to make it work and we're content with that. If that's enough, or if I deserve something more. If we _both_ deserve more."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe what I want is for someone to be _passionate_ about me, you know? Someone who can't stop thinking about me, who can't help themselves when they're around me. And you're...actually, _we're_ not that way with each other. We never have been. We worked and it was easy and it was comfortable and we care about each other, we do, there's no question about that. But god, sometimes I wonder what it would feel like...for my heart to be on _fire_."

He's stunned, because she's given voice to everything he's been feeling. They've never been that couple; he's never felt that way about anyone _(until recently,_ his traitorous brain supplies _)_ , and it always seemed like enough. Until it wasn't.

"I'm sorry I can't be that for you," he says, and is a little surprised when she laughs. 

"Oh, Dean. I can't be that for you, either, though we both tried. It doesn't make us bad people. What will, though, is if we don't do something about it, because eventually our need to 'do the right thing' is going to make us resent each other."

"Christ, Sam said exactly the same thing last night. Did he send you a transcript of his argument?" She reaches across the table and places her hands over his. 

"I'm saying that I want more out of life than just this, and so do you. And if you have a chance for something more, you should take it. Maybe...maybe I have a chance for something more, too," she finishes, looking slightly guilty. 

"Are you saying..." 

"No, no, I haven't done anything, just as you haven't. Or, well, I've done less than you have, let's say, but, um. I've _considered_ some things, maybe. With someone. But. Yeah. I don't know," she stammers and he grins. 

"Oh my god, we're a _mess_ ," he says, and she groans and nods her head in acknowledgement.

"What are we going to do about it?" she asks.

"Well...does the object of your desire have a _name_?" he finally asks. "Because maybe we should be plotting to help each other, since we know each other best." She giggles, and then throws her head back to laugh outright, and something shifts inside him as he follows suit because maybe, just maybe all of this is going to work out.

"You won't believe this, but...I met him the same day you met Cas. At the same party." She looks abashed, and he racks his brain trying to remember.

"Wait, that doctor guy? Mark? Michael?" 

"Matthew." 

" _Matthew._ Oh, you _minx_. I can't believe you're throwing away a blue-collar fireman for a white-collar _doctor_ ," he says in mock offense. "So how can I help?" And just like that, everything between them changes.

*******

They talk until Dean needs to head in for his shift, and it's clear that what they both want won't be found in each other. It was surprisingly anticlimactic, he thinks now, lounging in one of the recliners in the station's rec room. Two years they've spent building a life together and planning for their future, and neither of them has been able to admit until now that they're not truly happy. He's almost sorry they can't seem to love each other the way they should, because Lisa's level-headed fairness is probably more than he deserves. She's adamant that he continue to have a relationship with Ben, and that's the relief that Dean holds on to while he tries to figure out what to do with himself. With Cas.

 _Cas_. He's been in Dean's thoughts constantly these last few days; the only calls they've had are small kitchen fires and cats in trees, nothing to occupy his mind enough to drive away thoughts of lips and hands and eyes: Cas's lips as tales from his past fell from him, the way he gestured with his graceful fingers, his blue eyes animated and alive. 

He's managed to set things right with Lisa, or at least put them on the path to rightness, because they each know where they stand now. What he can't seem to figure out is what to do about Cas, how to approach him with everything he wants to say. He wants to let him know how he feels but he's afraid he won't be taken seriously, that Cas will think he's just an experiment, or a way for him to move out of his relationship with Lisa. He cringes a little inside, because ten years ago that may have been exactly what he'd wanted, and he's grateful he hadn't met Cas then, even if he wishes they'd met long ago. 

Maybe if he'd always had Cas in his life he wouldn't have done some of the things he regrets now, taken such a long time to find his way in the world and get comfortable in his own skin. He knows that Lisa has been a huge impact on him in this respect, and he feels another twinge of guilt again at their breakup. 

_We're not really breaking anything, Dean. We'll always care about each other. We're just kidding ourselves if we keep living this life as a couple that's pretending instead of the friends we actually are._

He knows what she means, actually, about the heart being on fire. He knows because he's been feeling it for months now, since the first day when he'd walked into Sam's kitchen and startled Cas. The first moment their eyes made contact he'd felt it, and it had taken all he had to act normal and unaffected. He'd dismissed it and pushed it down and determinedly ignored it until he couldn't anymore, just a week ago, when Cas wouldn't answer his phone and Dean's panicked heart thought something terrible had happened to him. 

Maybe lust was a factor here, but Dean couldn't deny that in the last four months he's enjoyed spending time with Cas more than he ever has with anyone, and that at some point all the dreams he had for his future have expanded to include one more person, in a role as yet undefined.

A role Dean has spent the last several days pondering, sitting around in the firehouse, playing cards and making lasagna and generally being physically present but far, far away in his mind. He's sure the guys notice but none of them say anything, although more than once Garth gives him a look like he's invited to talk if ever he wants to. And he wants to talk. Just not to them.

He's done his shift at noon tomorrow, Wednesday, and then he's off for the next four days. He wants to use them wisely, so he sends a text to Jess.

_Dean: Hey, what's your schedule like the next few days?_

It's an hour or so before she's able to answer, and he shakes his head at the way he's never been able to get anything by her when he reads it.

_Jess: If you're wondering what Cas's schedule is, why don't you just ask him?_

_Jess: I'll assume you're planning a surprise._

_Jess: We're done at 11 tonight, and then off for 2 days._

He sends a quick thank you, and then sits holding his phone for a while, flipping it upside down and right side up again over and over again. 

He hears a throat clearing behind him, and turns to find Benny standing in the kitchen doorway. 

"Are you close to making your life altering decision yet? Because it's my turn to cook dinner but you're putting too much somber vibe into my jambalaya preparation space."

Dean puts the phone down, resting his elbows on the table and rubbing his face with his hands. 

"Yeah, man, I'm sorry. I'll just..."

"Dean." 

"What?"

"Take a chance, man. Whatever it is. Just...take a chance."

He looks down at the table and nods before standing up, moving past Benny and clapping him on the shoulder as he goes.

"Thanks, man."

He heads outside, taking a deep breath and leaning into the brick of the firehouse, still warm from the sun despite the growing chill in the air. 

_Dean: Hey Cas. I need to talk to you about some things. Important things. Can we meet up tomorrow night?_

He can see that the text gets read right away, but it's after eight o'clock before Dean gets an answer, lying on his bunk full of jambalaya and nerves. 

_Cas: Is everything OK?_

_Dean: Yeah. Yeah, I just need to talk._

The three little dots taunt him for what feels like forever.

_Cas: Of course, Dean._

_Cas: You could just come over?_

_Dean: That's great. I could make dinner for us? I'll bring everything._

_Cas: We can make dinner together, Dean, don't be silly. 6 ok?_

_Dean: I'll be there._

*******

Cas has spent the week since Meg's death making various arrangements, feeling a sense of detachment even as he makes the type of calls he's gotten used to making over the years: first to the property agent to terminate his lease, then to his bank, then to his lawyer. He's already donated most of his clothes and possessions but can't seem to get rid of his books yet, like having empty shelves in the living room would be a silent testament to the failure he feels inside. The furniture he'll leave behind, and pack just enough clothes to travel with in a sturdy backpack that he's used for this exact process over the last few decades. He still hasn't decided exactly where he wants to go yet, but the destination isn't as important to him right now as getting away.

He just hasn't figured out yet how to tell anyone he cares about that he's going.

Usually when he leaves someplace he tries to make as little fanfare as possible: pretend he has a new job and a chance to relocate, put in his two weeks notice like anyone else, go through the extended goodbyes and promises to stay in touch, and then he'll disappear. Wherever he goes next he'll be someone else, picking at random from the handful of identities he'll retrieve from his safe deposit box, the products of Gabriel's own talents on Earth. He's been Cas, here, but he's also been Clarence, Jimmy, Steve...the names always vary even if nothing else about him does. 

He knows it's better this way. Even if Dean were free to be with him, if he ever even wanted that, what would Cas ever say to him? 

He remembers Gabe's long ago assertion that he could become human if he found his soulmate again on Earth, but that hasn't happened. So even if he had a chance to be with Dean, how long would it last before Cas had to abandon him and move on again, unchanging and alone, always searching for the reincarnation of that soul again so they could briefly be together?

He could never tell him the truth and have him believe, no matter what Dean saw with his own eyes.

The care Dean showed him the night that Meg died solidified everything for him. Dean's arms around him had made the fractured grace within him sing, and as they sat in the diner he felt a compulsion to tell him everything, tell him the real story of Meg, the real story of himself. He'd wanted Dean to come into the house with him afterwards so he could curl into his embrace, lie in bed with him looking up at the stars, and tell the truth of his existence.

_Dean, I used to be an angel._

No. Better that Dean have fond memories of Cas in his absence, instead of thinking he's gone crazy. 

_Remember what I said about the mirror._

Meg's last words echo in his head as he thinks about spending years loving Dean at a distance and never feeling love in return. 

On Wednesday, the opportunity comes for him to make a clean break. 

_Dean: Hey Cas. I need to talk to you about some things. Important things. Can we meet up tomorrow?_

He reads the text immediately, but doesn't answer at first. What important things could Dean have to say to him? 

_Cas: Is everything OK?_

_Dean: Yeah. Yeah, I just need to talk._

He hasn't told Jess that he's leaving yet, so she can't have told Dean. In fact, he has a meeting with HR at noon the next day to do his exit interview. Maybe he should just get it all over with, rip off the bandage, as it were. 

_Cas: Of course, Dean._

_Cas: You could just come over?_

He bites his lip, thinking about how to tell Dean he's leaving.

_Dean: That's great. I could make dinner for us? I'll bring everything._

_Cas: We can make dinner together, Dean, don't be silly. 6 ok?_

_Dean: I'll be there._

*******

The awkward tension that had been present and unspoken for weeks in his relationship with Lisa has easily transformed into good-natured teasing, and they spend that Wednesday night talking at length about their hopes. She'd been texting Matthew for months, it seems, but couldn't in good conscience take it beyond playful flirting.

"He'd never tried to take it too far, either," she says, curled up cross-legged on the couch with a cup of tea, the little tab hanging out of the cup reading _Your soul is your highest self._ "He knew I was in a relationship and he was always respectful of that, but there were so many times I thought that if you and I weren't together..." she trails off, shrugging. "It's strange, because I'd never thought about it before that day we met. I wonder: if we hadn't met them, do you think we'd still be rolling along, thinking we were happy?"

"I don't think we were _un_ happy, Lisa. It's why I had such a hard time trying to figure out what was going on with us." She reaches out to pat him on the knee, and he covers her hand with his own. 

"I'll never be sorry that we met, or for everything we had together, you know that, right? I think you'll always be in my life. And in Ben's, too, as long as you want that." 

"I'll always want that," he says. 

"Good," she sighs, as if a weight has been lifted. "So...would it be weird if I asked Matt out on a date or should I let him ask me first?" 

"Oh, you wait for no man. Go for it," he chuckles, poking her in the ribs as she laughs.

"What's going to happen with you, tonight?" she queries, tilting her head at him as she sips her tea. "Gonna do the walk of shame in the morning?" 

"Lisa!"

"What?" she says, blinking innocently at him. "I'm just saying maybe you should take an overnight bag, just in case."

"I'm just going over there to talk," he protests, "with my _lips._ "

"Oh, I have no doubt you'll be using your lips," she teases, and he groans.

*******

Dean spends that Thursday in a heightened state of anticipation: planning the food he'll make for Cas, trying to figure out what he should say about the understanding he and Lisa have come to, how to broach the subject of his feelings. He's never spent so much time thinking about how to come on to someone that he wants -- but then he's never wanted anyone as much as Cas.

He pulls into the driveway five minutes early, turning off the ignition and wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself that this is Cas, just as he's always been, and nothing has changed.

He just wants it to.

The door opens before he's reached the top step, and Cas gives him a small smile as he takes a bag out of Dean's hands, leading him into the house. The small entryway opens into a cozy living room with a kitchen to the right, an island with several high chairs separating the two spaces. There's a large leather couch with matching armchairs in the living room flanking a low coffee table, and across from the couch is the stereo. Most of the house is in darkness, just as it had been a week ago, but he knows from memory that the back wall has a couple of bookcases side by side, filled not with showpieces but with well-worn paperback books. He's only been here a few times, but he realizes now there's something he never noticed before.

"Why don't you have a TV?" he blurts out, as he follows Cas into the kitchen where he's already unbagging the groceries.

"I do, but it's up in the bedroom because it seemed silly to own two, and I'd rather watch TV in the comfort of my bed. I'm not a heathen, Dean," Cas says with a smirk, and Dean's heart flutters as he imagines long, lazy days spent binge-watching Netflix in bed with him. He shakes his head, reminding himself not to put the cart before the horse. "So, what do you want me to do first?" 

Dean sets him to washing and peeling potatoes as he makes his signature meatloaf. When he cooks for Sam and Jess he makes fairly healthy dishes, but if he's learned anything about Cas these last few months it's that his heart lies with comfort food. He's a great cook in his own right, but he also loves the same greasy spoon fare that Dean grew up on, travelling place to place with his dad and Sam as they traversed the country. Once meatloaf is in the oven and the potatoes are on the stove, Dean wanders back into the living room to peruse Cas's bookshelf as they cook.

There's no discernible affinity on these shelves for any particular genre, the spaces crowded with fiction and nonfiction alike, though in meticulous order by author if nothing else.

"Did you just pick all these up at a yard sale to fill these shelves?" Dean asks, though he doesn't actually believe it. Cas comes closer, and Dean can feel that familiar thrum under his skin as their personal spaces intersect, that ever-present pull to get closer.

"No, I've read them all. I just pick whatever interests me at the moment, whatever I want to learn or get lost in. As long as I'm reading, I'm happy," he says, reaching out to run a finger along the spines on the nearest shelf, and Dean shivers slightly to imagine that finger on his own spine. He breaks away and wanders over to the stereo. 

"Can I?" he says, gesturing to the iPod nestled in the dock, and Cas nods. Dean takes it off, thumbing through an enormous trove of what looks to be all classical music, none of which he recognizes. "The other night," he says hesitantly, "when I, uh, when I got here. What were you listening to then? Or does it upset you?" he hedges bashfully. Cas looks at him for a moment, tilting his head in thought before approaching Dean and holding out his hand for the iPod. He thumbs through it for a moment then places it back on the dock as he turns on the stereo. 

Dean's heard this music before, he's sure of it, maybe more than once, though he can't exactly place it. He takes a seat on Cas's luxurious couch, all soft cushions and buttery leather, closing his eyes and tilting his head back as he listens. He feels Cas sit on the other side, cushions dipping with his weight.

"What is this?" Dean asks quietly. 

"Barber's Adagio for Strings," Cas answers. "It's my favorite piece of music. I have a dozen different arrangements, at least, I think." Dean opens his eyes and turns his head, still resting against the back of the couch, observing Cas sitting sideways with his back against the armrest, one leg curled up on the cushion. 

"It sounds like...I don't know how to put it into words. Sad, I guess, but more than that?"

"Yes," Cas agrees, a blank look coming into his eyes, as if he's suddenly very far away. "I've always thought that it was the sound of abject sorrow set to music; what grief and mourning would sound like if they could speak." He clears his throat, looking down at his lap. "Sometimes strings sound like weeping. It's very powerful." The depths of this beautiful man are still hidden to Dean, and he wants so much to finally reach across the chasm between them. He sits up, turning towards Cas so he can finally speak, but the oven timer goes off. They head back into the kitchen, their movements around one another as they cook so fluid they seem practiced, and the easy domesticity that surrounds them makes Dean greedy for more of it.

Cas gets them each a beer as Dean puts together their plates, a generous portion of mashed potatoes and gravy and meatloaf with a buttered biscuit each. He knows he's probably showing off with this but Cas doesn't call him on it, instead sitting before his plate like he's been waiting all day for it. He cuts off a piece of meat and gets a forkful of potatoes with it, blowing on both before putting them into his mouth, moaning as the flavors hit his tongue.

"I will take that as a compliment," Dean chuckles, digging into his own plate. 

Cas asks him questions about his recipe as they eat, the types of questions only someone who's really into a dish and wants to learn how to mimic it will ask, and Dean playfully avoids answering them. 

"If you don't tell me how to recreate this you're just going to have to make it for me forever," Cas finally says, defeated, and Dean smiles in silent triumph because that was his plan all along. 


	10. Sweat

“I try to make it through my life, in my way, with you. I try to make it through these lies, and that's all I do.” - _I Don't Care_ , Apocalyptica

***

They clean up the kitchen in companionable silence before moving back into the living room, taking up their previous positions on the couch. 

"You said you wanted to talk?" Cas asks, finally, and as much as he's practiced this moment Dean can't think of how to begin. He opens his mouth to start and then closes it again. 

"What piece is this?" he asks instead of what he wants to say, and Cas squints at him before he answers.

"This is the Lux Aeterna. It's from _Requiem for a Dream_." 

"I swear everything I've heard so far has been in a movie at some point."

"Dean," Cas says gently. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to -- but I sense you didn't go through all this trouble just to listen to my music collection. I think there's something you want to say very much." It's so sincere and so _true_ that it loosens his tongue somewhat.

"Lisa and I, we, uh...we're discussing a change in our relationship." Somewhat loose apparently means his tongue doesn't have the ability to express clear and concise thought, because even he cringes at how vague that sentence is.

"Oh," Cas responds, somewhat taken aback. "I'm sorry. Why?" Dean takes a sip of liquid courage. 

"Well, some things happened that made us realize maybe there were other things we wanted to explore. That I wanted to explore."

"Other...things?" Cas asks, tilting his head again. 

"Other...people," Dean says on an exhale, and he looks away, hoping Cas will understand what he means. He's been thinking about this for months, planning this confession all day: why is it so hard? Cas doesn't say anything, and when Dean finally turns to him he looks sad. "Don't you have anything to say?" he asks desperately, leaning forward to put his beer on the table and rubbing his hands nervously on his jeans. Cas looks up, startled, and places his beer on the table as well. 

"I...well, I'm just surprised. You've never mentioned anyone," he responds, looking down at his hands. 

"You've got to be kidding me," Dean says flatly, and at the quizzical look Cas gives him he stands up from the couch, taking a few steps towards the bookshelves. He covers his mouth with a hand as he stands with his back to Cas, mind reeling.

Cas doesn't know. All these months, he thought he was obvious. Sam convinced him that Cas was just holding back because he's a gentlemen, but now Dean's faced with the actuality that Cas has no idea how he feels. Because apparently this is all on him, and not reciprocated _at all_. Dean is completely alone in this. 

"I have to go," he says defeatedly, turning to walk towards the door, and he's only a few steps away when he feels Cas grab him by the arm.

"Dean, wait! I don't understand!" he says sharply, turning Dean to face him and putting his hands on his shoulders. "What's wrong?" His face is so full of concern, so handsome, and as he touches Dean that sensation flares up within him, overriding all reason and thought.

Dean bridges the space between them and presses their lips together. 

The effect on Cas is instantaneous.

He gasps as his hands move to Dean's hips, pulling him closer as he kisses him in earnest. Dean's hands fly up to cup his face, running his fingers along the jawline that he's wanted to caress for months. He's kissing Cas, and Cas _is kissing him back_ , tugging at his belt loops as he moves him back in the direction of the couch. Dean follows willingly as Cas sits back down and reclines into the cushions, pulling Dean to rest between his legs as he braces his weight on his arms and ravishes those full lips. He nudges at Cas's chin so he can kiss the column of his throat, the slight stubble against his tongue a wholly new sensation that makes him tingle. Cas gasps his name breathlessly, his hands moving under the back of Dean's shirt to trail them over his skin, leaving fire stoked all along their path. Dean runs his tongue up the corded muscle of Cas's neck, nipping lightly at his earlobe before claiming his lips again as Cas opens up beneath him, their tongues tangling together. 

Dean has never been so ready so fast, and he presses his hard length into Cas to find him in the same state already, their cocks brushing up against each other through denim as Cas breaks off the kiss to moan. 

"Cas," Dean whispers reverently, rolling his hips firmly into the body beneath him as Cas's hands move down his back to clasp his ass, pressing Dean into him harder. Cas looks up at him fiercely, his pupils already dilated and no hesitance in his gaze as he presses himself up to meet Dean's hips. 

"I want you, Dean. I never thought you wanted me in return," he says lowly, and the guttural rasp of his voice makes Dean shiver as he leans down to kiss him softly, taking that lush bottom lip between his own and pulling on it gently before releasing it again. He kisses the bone of Cas's jaw as he leans down to whisper in his ear.

"You haven't shown me your TV room yet," he says, licking lightly along the shell of his ear, relishing the sharp intake of breath it elicits. He leans up on his arms again. "Take me upstairs, Cas."

Cas looks up at him for a moment, breathing hard, until those hands on his ass trace around Dean’s hips and up his chest, gently pushing at him. He sits back, letting Cas get up from the couch -- and as he pauses Dean thinks for a moment that he's changed his mind, that he wants to talk about this -- but he turns to look at Dean over his shoulder and holds out a hand instead, and as Dean slides his palm into it he gets the sense that something long overdue has clicked into place, certain and irrevocable.

He stands from the couch and lets Cas lead him by the stereo to shut it off, then up the staircase, his gait unhurried and sure as he flicks a switch to turn the lights off below them. The hallway is shrouded in darkness but Dean follows the sure step of Cas before him, his hand warm in Dean's as they move down the hall and through a door on the right.

Cas flicks a switch again and a soft lamp comes on as Dean moves past him into the room, taking in the dark grey of the walls and the subtle earth tones of the bedsheets as Cas releases his hand. The room is arranged strangely, with a queen-sized bed shoved in the corner of the room against the windows, throwing off the symmetry you would expect. He turns to look at Cas, now standing by the doorway looking almost shy, twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands. Dean waits, and when Cas finally looks at him again he reaches out, taking hold of the door and walking it closed, the gesture bringing him into Cas's space as he leans with one hand on the door, taking Cas by the hip with the other, and leaning into capture his lips again.

Cas shifts, pushing Dean's back into the door now as he gathers his shirt in both hands and rucks it up his chest, breaking away from his lips to pull it over his head then taking a step back to admire him. 

"Oh Dean," he exhales, fingertips tracing his collarbones and then down his chest, Dean's pectoral muscles twitching at the sensation. His left hand grabs Dean by the hip as he circles a nipple with the fingers of his right, watching heatedly as it perks up under his touch and Dean arches back against the door. 

"Cas," he says brokenly, and Cas chases his own fingers with his mouth, laving wetly at a nipple as Dean keens. "Please, Cas," he whines, tugging at his shirt, and Cas obliges by letting Dean pull it over his head before he latches onto his other nipple. "Fuck," he says, banging the back of his head lightly against the door as Cas unbuttons his jeans and opens the zipper, moving both hands into the waistband to grab at Dean's ass again as he slowly pushes them down until they pool at his feet. Cas teases under the band of his boxer briefs with a single finger as Dean grabs a fistful of his hair, pulling him up into a searing kiss as he pushes lightly onto his shoulders. He steps out of his jeans as he guides Cas backwards to the bed, but as the back of his knees hit the mattress Cas turns and shoves Dean back against it instead. He stares at Cas, who's looking at him with a burning gaze so intent that Dean feels like he's going to be eaten alive and enjoy every moment of it. Cas unbuttons his own jeans, and as they fall to his feet Dean scoots back more fully onto the mattress. Cas never breaks eye contact as he kneels on the bed and crawls to Dean like a tiger stalking prey, straddling his lap as he braces his hands on either sides of Dean's head. 

Dean's hands come up reflexively to grasp at Cas, his thumbs rubbing circles into the hipbones before traversing his ribs, tracing back down them again lightly with his knuckle as Cas leans down to suck at his throat. 

"Don't," he whispers gently, knowing that if Cas leaves a hickey there that Ben will see it and ask questions, so Cas laves at the spot with his tongue instead before trailing kisses down Dean's chest and the soft skin of his stomach before he sits back on Dean's thighs, gazing down at him with a look Dean can't define.

"What do you want, Dean?" he whispers softly, and Dean can hardly focus with that much naked skin before him, the shape of Cas's hard-on obvious even in his dark blue boxer-briefs. Dean reaches out, tracing it with a finger, and Cas sighs as he throws his head back, letting Dean stroke his erection lightly before he cups it with his hand and Cas moans. 

"I'm not sure where to start," Dean admits, rubbing Cas with his palm before he sits up, wrapping his arms around his back and leaning in to kiss the skin of Cas's stomach before he presses his forehead against him. "I've never...I've never been with..." He stalls, unable to get the words out, and he feels Cas's fingers threading in his hair and pulling his head back gently for a kiss. 

"Tell me what you want in the general sense, and I'll work with that," Cas says, cupping his face and caressing Dean's cheekbones with his thumbs. Dean stares into those eyes he's dreamt of drowning in for months now, lost and found all at once and forever. 

"I just want you, Cas," he says honestly. "I just want to be close to you, to touch you, for you to touch me." He can't articulate more than that, but Cas seems to understand given how fierce his kiss is, and Dean takes advantage of their position to flip Cas onto his back, divesting him of his briefs and throwing them off the bed. "Jesus Christ," Dean says under his breath, pausing to take it all in. Cas's form is athletic without being overly muscled, most of him tan from the California sun except for the pale skin of his pelvis and the tops of his thighs. Cas's cock lays hard and heavy, curving against his stomach out of his dark pubic hair. Before he thinks about it Dean braces his hands on Cas's thighs and leans in to lick him from root to tip, taking it into his mouth and suckling at it gently, precome warm and salty against his tongue.

"Dean!" Cas cries out in surprise before he groans and clutches at the sheets with his hands. It doesn't occur to Dean to be unsure and wonder if he's doing this correctly, driven only by his desire to make Cas feel good, to explore all of him as he's ached to do for months now. Cas's cock is silky on his tongue as he takes it in slowly, moving off as it hits the back of his throat, testing his own limits as he moves a hand down to stroke Cas's perineum and cup his balls. He's doing something right if the sounds Cas is making are anything to go by, but he moves slowly, taking his time. 

He learns that Cas's breath comes faster if he swirls his tongue around the tip on the upstroke, and he keens out loud when Dean lifts his sack to lick the sensitive skin below his balls. "Dean, please stop, please, I don't want to...not yet, please," he babbles, and Dean lets himself be pulled up by his shoulders as Cas invades his mouth, chasing the taste of himself on Dean's tongue. He pulls Dean's full weight down on top of him and Dean gasps as his cloth-covered erection presses into Cas's own. Cas groans as he grabs Dean's ass with both hands and continues to plunder his mouth as he rolls him onto his back, taking control. He moves to suck on Dean's nipples as he rids him of the last piece of clothing between them, and Dean's back arches off the bed as his hardness is finally freed into the cool air before being wrapped in the heat of Cas's palm as he strokes him before moving to take Dean's cock into his mouth.

Dean is covered in a sheen of sweat from the effort of not bucking into that glorious wet heat, putting his hands under the pillow on either side of his head and gripping it tightly as he groans, calling out Cas's name as he feels a finger stroke the tight, furled muscle between his cheeks. Dean is an incoherent wreck in minutes, knowing no one has ever taken him apart like this before. 

Cas pauses in his ministrations to press the length of his body against Dean's side, encouraging him to turn and face him. Dean cups Cas's face with his hands, pressing their foreheads together to ground himself as Cas takes both of them in hand, precome and saliva slicking the way as he strokes them together. Dean is close, feels like he's been on the edge for a while, and the muscles of his stomach tighten as he cries out Cas's name and spills his seed between them, coating Cas's fist with come before he, too, follows with a shout of his own.

They lie there, panting into each other’s mouths as they come down, until Cas kisses Dean softly and rolls off the bed, padding through a door on the other side of the room. Dean flops onto his back, throwing an arm over his eyes, and he can't seem to stop smiling as he hears water running in what must be the bathroom. He doesn't move as he hears Cas return to the room, but he finally moves his arm to look at him as he gently wipes Dean off with a warm washcloth, the still damp skin of his own stomach glistening in the low light. Dean is still grinning at him when Cas looks up, and his answering smile is the one that never fails to get to Dean as he places a kiss on his hip and heads back into the bathroom. He returns empty-handed as Dean gets off the bed and meets him at the edge of it, bringing their spent bodies together as he kisses him.

"Can we just lie here together for a while?" Dean asks softly, nudging the skin of Cas's cheek as he feels him nod. Cas turns off the light, then pulls back the covers and climbs in closest to the window, gaps in the blinds letting moonlight illuminate his form on the bed as he lies on his back. Dean admires the sight for a moment, then follows and curls up against the length of him as Cas puts an arm around his back. Dean pillows his head on Cas's chest, one arm curled against his side as the other idly strokes the skin of his stomach. Cas presses a kiss into his hair as he runs the pads of his fingers up and down Dean's spine, and Dean feels a sense of rightness and belonging that he thinks he's been missing all his life.

There are so many things he wants to say in this moment, but none of them seem to convey the depth of emotion he's feeling, and as he ponders where to begin he falls asleep instead.

*******

Cas lies in the dark the way he has so many nights before, looking out the window by his bed and remembering what it was like to fly. Only this time something is markedly different. 

This time, he's finally found an experience that rivals his memory of having wings.

Dean lies pliant and warm against him, nestled in the crook of his arm as Cas strokes his back lightly with a fingertip. His breath is soft and even, and as Cas listens to the soft cadence of air through his nostrils he wonders what he dreams of now, in this human form that has never known the angel Cassiel.

He tears his eyes away from the window, looking down at the man in his arms. He can no longer see them as two separate entities; the man Dean as only a vessel for the bright soul he once knew as Fintan. No, for some time now they have been one and the same, intertwined in his mind and his heart, never again to be separated. Maybe he was drawn to the soul inside him at first, their bond throbbing to life once more at meeting again, but he cannot deny any longer that he loves Dean as wholly himself: the way he cares for the people around him through acts great and small, the thoughtless way he puts others before himself, the unbridled joy he shows when he's doing something he really loves. Whatever he felt for Fintan, dead these many centuries, is transformed now into complete adoration for Dean and Dean alone, bright and alive and in his arms at last.

He gently brings his hand up to stroke Dean's hair as he nuzzles closer, unconsciously, and Cas can't help but smile. He'd been crushed earlier when Dean started talking about being interested in other people, racking his brain as he searched for who it could be. Ellen and Missouri were too old, but there were plenty of other pretty women that Jess knew who came to the cookouts she and Sam had whenever they had a Saturday off. He'd been going through the list of them in his mind, trying to determine which one Dean favored, not realizing that Dean was looking at him and expecting an answer of some kind. 

As he moved to leave, Dean seemed angry and upset and Cas suddenly felt like he'd let his own personal feelings interfere with his ability to be a good friend. All he could think about was making Dean stay, making him talk to him, and as Cas looked into those eyes he knew without a doubt that he no longer saw Fintan in them.

When Dean leaned into him with a kiss, Cas lost all ability for rational thought as it clicked into place that what Dean wanted...was _him._ All he could focus on was lips and hands and skin, on pouring everything he felt into physical sensation, and it's hard to regret his actions as he lies here now, holding the man he loves safe and warm against him in slack repose.

He leans back into the pillow, staring at the ceiling, wondering what will happen now. How can he begin a relationship with Dean when there are things he doesn't know? There's so much he wants to say, so many stories to tell, but he wonders if the weight of all that history is a burden too great for a human heart. On top of that, there's the state of his grace, still humming underneath his skin. 

_If you find it again, and it loves you still, there's hope for you._

Gabriel had told him that before he fell from Heaven, and it was a hope he'd buried under duty and responsibility and time for so long that he'd almost forgotten about it. He doesn't think Gabriel had been wrong, but it was there even so: the latent energy that kept him alive, kept him preserved, kept him apart always from humanity even as he walked among them.

_If you find it again, and it loves you still, there's hope for you._

So the soul within Dean no longer loves him, its passion erased by time, and Castiel knows he’ll never be human after all. Instead he has this lifetime with Dean, however long he may live, and then Cas will be alone again.

He stares back out through the slats of the blinds, taking in the starry strips of sky as he ponders how he will explain to Dean why he grows old and Castiel stays young. What can he say that Dean would ever believe? 

Cas leans down to kiss him gently on the top of his head. Dean deserves the truth, and that’s what he’ll give him, no matter the consequences. Right now he has this, and he closes his eyes to marvel at it. 

"I love you," he whispers to Dean into the darkness, knowing he can't hear.

*******

Cas nods off himself for several hours, and when he wakes Dean is still asleep against him. He tries to move gingerly as he disentangles himself, but Dean is startled awake by the movement of his pillow, groaning lowly as he moves towards consciousness and leaning back slightly to rub at his eyes. 

"Sorry," Cas whispers. "I didn't mean to wake you." The bedside clock reads one a.m., and Cas can't believe they slept so long. He sits up and scoots off the end of the bed, pausing to toss Dean his briefs as he stoops to pull on his own before heading into the bathroom and shutting the door. He does what he needs to, then brushes his teeth out of habit, staring at his reflection in the mirror. 

Dean is still here, in his bed. He can't help but smile around his toothbrush before he spits and rinses out his mouth.

"Why do you have your bed shoved into the corner like this?" Dean asks when Cas comes back out, crawling back into his previous spot. He puts his arms behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling, and he can feel Dean watching his profile in the low moonlight, probably wondering why such a simple question causes so much contemplation.

"I like to look at the sky as I go to sleep," he finally says, softly. "Up against both these windows, I can almost pretend I'm up there, among the stars."

"Why do you do that?" Dean whispers.

"I don't think you'll believe me."

"You could at least give me a chance to."

Cas sighs and looks back up at the ceiling, closing his eyes to brace himself. He wants to believe there's a way to make Dean understand, but despite having centuries to ponder this explanation, he realizes now that he never actually thought he'd have the opportunity to give it. 

"There are so many things I want to tell you, but I don't know where to begin."

"Start David Copperfield style, then. Where were you born?" Cas can't help but grin a little.

"I wasn't born, exactly. Not in the way you were."

"So what, Caesarian section? Did you kill Macbeth or something? You're so serious right now."He can tell Dean is trying to make him laugh, to mitigate what he's discerned is a serious situation. "Talk to me, Cas."

He sighs before turning on his side to face Dean, and suddenly it feels like there's more distance between them than just a foot of negative space; an entire empire encompassed within the space of a cotton bedsheet.

"What if I told you I'm not what I seem to be?" 

"Cas," he whispers, "if you tell me you're in Witness Protection, we're going to be up all night because I will not be able to sleep until I know every single detail."

"No, not exactly."

"What does any of this have to do with the position of your bed?" 

Cas rubs a hand over his face, and Dean reaches out to capture it, twining their fingers together to bridge the gap between them. Cas decides to just start with a topic Dean already knows and tell him the truth, see what happens, and go from there.

"When I told you about Meg, you asked me how long ago that was, do you remember?" He sees Dean nod slightly, the slats from the slightly open blinds throwing stripes of silver moonlight across his face, highlighting his eyes. "Meg was ninety when she died last week. She was in a convalescent home, recovering from a stroke."

Dean doesn't respond right away, as though he's desperately trying to process this information.

"So, was it like a Harold and Maude thing?"

"I don't understand that reference." 

"It's a movie. It doesn't matter. So you fell in love with a much older woman? How old was she when you started dating?"

"Nineteen."

"That...doesn't make sense, Cas. How is that...what are you saying?"

"I met Meg at a train station in Chicago as I came back from World War II, where I'd served as a medic." Dean's eyes widen but Cas closes his as he blathers on. "I've served as a medic in wartime more than once, but that's not the important part."

"What..."

"I'm trying to say that I've been alive for a long time now. Hundreds of years here on Earth." He tries to let that sink in, opening his eyes to look at Dean's shocked face, even paler in the moonlight than before. Dean pulls his hand out of Cas's grasp and rolls onto his back, breaking their gaze as he swallows heavily.

"If you say 'there can be only one' I'm going to have to leave and never come back."

"I don't own a broadsword, though I know how to use one." 

"Jesus Christ, Cas, what are you _saying_ to me right now?"

"I'm an angel. Or rather, I used to be, long ago."

Dean sits up abruptly, turning his back on Cas as he plants his feet on the floor, putting his face in his hands. Cas reaches out to touch him before he thinks better of it, turning his gaze back to the window, staring at the slats of night sky.

"This is crazy. Everything you're saying is insane," Dean finally says as he drops his hands. "What is your game?" His voice takes on an edge of anger, and as he turns to look at Cas over his shoulder his eyes blaze.

"It's a long story, but I swear it's true, Dean."

"How can any of that be _true_? What the fuck are you really trying to tell me?" He gets up from the bed and starts looking for his clothes. "If you didn't want me to stay, you could have just said so."

"That's not it!" Cas says, climbing off the bed to take Dean's jeans out of his hands. "Please, I'm trying to tell you something, something _important_." Dean looks at him, breathing heavily through his nose as Cas holds him by the elbows, then moves his hands up to his shoulders, then his neck, clasping his fingers together behind it. "I need to tell you this, Dean. I don't want to lie to you, about anything."

Dean reaches up to pull Cas's hands away, and he turns away from him, leaning against the door as Cas sits back down on the bed. 

"I can't have this conversation in the middle of the night."

"Stay with me, then," Cas whispers, an edge of desperation threatening to creep into his voice. "Stay until morning, and if you want to listen I promise I'll explain all of it to you, in detail. I’ll prove I’m not lying. I swear it." 

Dean turns to look over his shoulder, but Cas can't read the emotion in his eyes. He lies down again, turning on his side, facing away as he holds his breath, waiting. He can feel Dean staring at his back, and he's sorely tempted to use his grace to read his mind, but he doesn't. It would be a violation, and he never wants to do that to Dean. He hears him moving, but instead of the rustling of clothes being put back on he feels the bed dip behind him and exhales in relief. Dean doesn't touch him, but Cas can feel how near he is, the heat of his skin as he breathes beside him in the night. 

Cas listens intently to the pattern of his breathing, hoping to hear him fall back to sleep, but at some point he drifts off instead.

*******

Dean wakes first in the gray light of morning, when even the sun isn't fully awake, and blinks sleep from his eyes as he regains his awareness. He turns on his side to face Cas, asleep on his back, head turned towards him, eyes darting back and forth beneath his lids as he dreams. Dean watches him sleep for a few minutes, softly running his right index finger up the inside of Cas's right forearm, watching his fingers twitch slightly before he stops for fear of waking him. Then he turns onto his own back and stares at the ceiling. 

The things Cas said last night have his head spinning. Is it some kind of joke? Is Cas suffering some kind of delusion? 

He's only sure of one thing at the moment: it feels right waking up here, in a way he's never known with another person, a way he never knew he's been missing. He'd woken up next to Lisa every day for two years and had never felt the contentment he does in this moment, and part of him feels awful about it. 

Lisa. He realizes that he's going to be doing the walk of shame after all, just as she predicted. He turns to glance at Cas again, fretting, wondering what to make of those things he said. Something about them struck a deep chord in Dean, something he doesn't understand. Something that frightens him. 

He sits up slowly, rubbing the back of his hair before resting his elbows on his knees, tenting the rumpled sheet over them. He turns his head and rests his chin on his left shoulder, just looking at Cas for a while, before he carefully gets out of the bed and starts looking for his clothes.

He knows what he needs to do. 

Fifteen minutes later he is completely dressed except for his boots, which he holds in his left hand as he tiptoes out into the hallway and creeps down the stairs to the kitchen. As the sun starts to peek above the horizon and shine through the slats of the blinds, he grabs a small magnetic notebook attached to the fridge, and soon after locates a pen in a drawer.

He writes quickly but deliberately, chewing the end of the pen as he re-reads his note before ripping it off the pad and putting everything back where he'd found it. Leaving his shoes at the front door, he tiptoes back up the staircase, folding the note in half as he goes.

Cas sleeps on.

Dean creeps up to the same side of the bed he'd vacated earlier and lays his note on the empty pillow, taking a last, lingering look before making his way back downstairs to put on his shoes. He grabs his jacket from the hook by the front door and locates both his keys and phone, now dead, in the pockets. He makes his way into the chilly morning air, turning the lock on the inside knob and pulling the door shut behind him, and five minutes later he pulls out into the street and is gone.

In the bedroom, Cas turns on his side, sleeping limbs grasping the empty space where his lover had been, inadvertently knocking the pillow there askew, and the folded piece of paper slips into the crack between the mattress and the headboard, fluttering onto the floor under the bed.

It's another hour before Cas finally wakes and finds himself alone. 


	11. Sacrifice

“Suddenly I knew that you'd have to go; your world was not mine, your eyes told me so. Yet it was clear I felt the crossroads of time, and I wondered why.” - _The Old Ways_ , Loreena McKennitt

***

Dean sits in the driveway, listening to the idle ticking of his engine after he turns off the car. His train of thought is interrupted when he sees the front screen door open as Lisa pokes out her head and lifts a cup of coffee in his direction, the look on her face open and warm and reminding him of why this is so difficult despite everything. He gets out of the car, door creaking loudly in the quiet of the early morning, and heads into the house.

She takes a seat on one of the high stools along the kitchen counter, placing the coffee in front of the seat opposite and gesturing for Dean to sit down. He cups the mug in his hand, letting its warmth seep into his skin, the comforting aroma soothing his nerves. Lisa smirks as she takes a sip from her own mug.

"I take it from your walk of shame this morning that things went well."

"Lis..." he starts, apology on the tip of his tongue.

"Don't, Dean. Don't say you're sorry. You shouldn't be. We talked about this." She leans back, sweeping her long dark hair back into a ponytail, pulling an elastic off her wrist in one smooth motion and securing it firmly. She means business, obviously, and folds her hands in front of her, leaning her forearms on the granite surface and looking him firmly in the eye. "How was it?" 

He lets out a surprised chuckle and rubs his hands over his face a couple of times.

"Oh god, I can't believe we're having this conversation." He can't keep the smile off his face, and it must be infectious because she giggles and grins foolishly back at him. No one looking at them would imagine that this is a couple who recently ended their own relationship, and that's what drives it home for him: they are better suited as friends. Lisa was right all along, and the guilt he feels is more out of obligation than anything else, a realization that lifts the weight off his chest. "It wasn't as scandalous as you're imagining, you know. I made dinner first. And then I tried to talk to him, but...well. Words got in the way and actions took their place."

"Uh-huh," she grins, sipping from her mug and winking at him. "So, why are you home so early then?"

"Last night, after, well, after we'd dozed off for a bit, he said some strange things. I didn't understand any of them, but they worried me out a bit. He said he would explain them all this morning, but..." 

"But you felt spooked this morning so you left without letting him explain? You left before he woke up, didn't you?" she guesses from the abashed look on his face, and he nods. "That's cruel, Dean."

"I left him a note! I just needed a little space to think about it, and then I'm going to go back over there so we can talk. I thought I'd get a shower and change, pack up a bag, maybe go for a drive, and then head to his place. I just need a little space. I felt kind of overwhelmed this morning." Lisa hums into her mug, nodding along with what he's saying.

"Just promise me you'll give him a chance to explain himself, okay? I want you to be happy, Dean, I really do, and I think that's possible for you with him in a way that isn't with me." 

"You know," he says, leaning on the counter, "you're still going to be important to me, both you and Ben. You're family to me, and I don't want to lose that." He reaches across the counter and takes her hand, and she squeezes his fingers in acknowledgement.

"We're only going to be stronger when we find what makes us happy. I think you have. I think eventually I will, too," she says. "You don't think Cas will feel weird around me, though, do you? I mean, I know what you look like naked and all."

"Yeah, you and all the guys at the firehouse. He's got a lot of competition in that respect."

She chuckles before draining her coffee, standing up to take her mug and put it in the sink. 

"What are we going to tell Ben?" he asks, staring into his mug, feeling guilty all over again. She tosses her ponytail over her shoulder as she looks back at him.

"He's not a baby, so we'll tell him the truth. He'll be sad when you move out, but he'll be happy that you'll stay in his life. It's going to be fine, don't worry." She pats him on the shoulder as she passes, heading up to their bedroom, bare feet soft on the staircase. He finishes his coffee and gets up so he can follow when the landline starts ringing, and he grabs it as he places his own mug in the sink, not even glancing to see who's calling.

"Dean!" Benny says, the surprise and relief in his voice evident. "Brother, I have called your cell about a dozen times, are you okay?" 

He pats his jacket pocket, realizing that he'd completely forgotten about his dead phone. 

"Yeah, sorry. Phone died because I forgot to put it on the charger last night, what's up?"

"Listen, I know it's your off rotation, but we've got an all hands on deck situation." Dean glances towards the stairs and sees Ben hanging over the railing, waving at him, and he lifts his hand in greeting before the boy runs back up the stairs, far less quietly than his mother had moments before.

"I'm listening."

Less than ten minutes later, just as Castiel is waking up alone on the other side of town, Dean is back in the Impala and heading towards the location Benny gave him over the phone. It's an apartment fire, and a bad one, and they've been battling it for hours so they need all the help they can get. He grabs his phone to text Cas before remembering that it's still dead, and he curses to himself while simultaneously being glad he left a note. 

He never imagined it would be under the bed, untouched, but no less poignant.

_Cas,_

_I need a little time to think, so I've gone home to fetch some things._

_I don't know how long I'll be gone, but I will be back._

_I want to hear whatever you have to say._

_There are so many things I need to say to you in return._

_Dean_

*******

Cas wakes up slowly, feeling around on the other side of the bed, before he finally rubs his bleary eyes and opens them. 

Dean is gone. Dean woke up at some point and went home, leaving Cas without even so much as a goodbye. 

He sees his own jeans still on the floor where he left them, and reaches down to dig his phone out of the pocket, low on battery but still on. 

There's nothing there. No missed calls, no texts.

 _Dean?_ he sends before he can think better of it. _Is everything okay?_

As he waits for a response, he goes over the events of the previous night in his head. 

_"This is crazy. Everything you're saying is insane."_

_"I can't have this conversation in the middle of the night."_

Then the way he'd begged, shamelessly, desperate for Dean to stay, to listen.

_"Stay until morning, and if you want to listen I promise I'll explain all of it to you, in detail. I swear it."_

Apparently he didn't want to listen. The empty and cold side of the bed, the absence of any communication, the failure to let Cas know he was leaving at all indicate that's the case.

It can't be. It just... _can't be._

He slowly stands up, as if it pains him to do so, and wanders downstairs. He checks the kitchen and the table by the entryway, but doesn't see a note. He peeks out the curtain to peer at the empty driveway, staring at the space where Dean had been parked the night before. Mindful of his nakedness, he lets the curtain fall back into place, trudging back up the stairs, grabbing his phone to check it.

There's been no answer to his text messages, and Dean's silence tells Cas everything. 

He stares at the empty side of the bed for what seems an interminable amount of time, unmoving. He's trying to properly catalog his feelings, because in the five hundred years since he's started having them, he's never felt this one before. It takes some time for him to get through them all; he lists all the ones he's known and dismisses them, then starts going through all the others he's read about and tries to match them by description. He has no idea how much time passes while he considers, but once he comes to an answer he sits back down on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees and hanging his head.

What he feels is _resignation_. It leaves him too hollow even to cry. 

Is it better or worse, now that he's tasted what they could have together if only Dean had chosen to stay?

He decides it's worse. Before, he could always hope; now, he knows he never will again. 

He shuffles into the bathroom, knowing there's nothing more he can do. He feels as though he's lain himself bare, and it isn't enough. 

He stands under the shower head, washing himself like a zombie, and decides it's time to just leave -- only now, he knows there will never be a destination for him. All the rest of his days on Earth will be nothing but a never ending journey -- wandering from place to place, always alone, preserved by his grace, just as incapable of dying as he now is of living. 

He braces his hands against the tile, opening his mouth to scream.

*******

The scene Dean arrives at looks like utter chaos from the outside, but he knows once he gets past all the bystanders and gawkers things will make more sense. He grabs his spare turnout gear from the trunk after he parks several blocks away, jogging back to the scene and nodding to a couple of the cops he knows as they let him through the barricade. It takes a few minutes for him to find Benny, who fills him in as he starts stepping into all his gear.

"We've been at this for a couple of hours now already, but we think it started long before we got clued in because it was already out of control by the time we came on the scene. We're having trouble getting her to behave, so we've been calling everybody in, sorry brother."

"It's fine, am I the last one you had to get a hold of?" Benny nods an affirmative, pointing off in the distance to another group already suited up, and Dean can see Rufus talking to them as he gestures at the building. 

"Rufus is gonna send all of you into the apartment complex on the west side to make sure she's clear, and once that's empty we'll bring you all back out to work on control." Dean is already jogging towards Rufus even as he nods at Benny's directions, pulling the last of his gear in place, the seventy pounds or so of equipment doing little to slow him down. They tackle the stairs of the apartment building, intending to work from the top down, four of them splitting off on the fifth floor as the other four head up to the sixth and divide further into twos as they tackle opposite ends of the hallway. Dean and Vic are on the fifth floor, knocking on door after door, gently ushering out the residents who aren't already standing on the street watching the fire from outside, coaxing them down the stairs. They work methodically, moving down to the third floor next and repeating the process before finally getting down to the first floor. They've made progress faster than their counterparts, who got tangled up with a stubborn resident on the third floor who refused to leave, and something tells Dean there's a problem as they make their way to the end of the hall towards the back of the building and turn to the apartment that will share a wall with the one that's currently burning. 

"Vic?" he says, questioning with a raised eyebrow, and his companion nods. 

It's warmer down here, they can both feel it. He puts a hand to the door, and it's warm, too, but the heat isn't intense.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," he says, and Vic chuckles a bit as they both stand to the sides and turn the doorknob.

Inside the room, smoke is curling all along the ceiling, and they can see a lick of flame at the end of the hall towards the back of the apartment. Vic starts talking frantically into the radio but Dean is on auto-pilot as he moves into the room, spotting a body behind the sofa, calling Vic to check it since he's closer and is already moving towards the hall. There's a bathroom on the left, and as he opens the door he sees two little girls huddled in the empty tub, one with her arms around her knees being rocked back and forth by another, older girl. They look to be about two and six, and it strikes a chord in Dean as he moves to reassure them.

"Shh, sweeties, it's OK, yeah? Let's get you out of here, I need you both to come with me, alright?" He speaks low but urgently, sweeping the smallest girl up and cradling her on his left shoulder even as he deftly leans down to her older sister, cradling her in his right arm as she wraps her arms around his neck.

"Who else is in the house with you girls, can you tell me so I can help them?" 

"Jus' mommy and nanny," the eldest whispers, but she's holding him so tightly he has no trouble hearing her. By now their floor companions are there and Dean hands a girl to each of them, seeing that Vic is already on his way out with what looks to be an elderly woman. 

"Get these girls out, I'm gonna find their mother and I'll follow," he says, turning back to the hall without waiting for an answer. The smoke is thicker along the ceiling here, but the two bedrooms on the right are both empty, and he has a sick feeling as he turns into the last bedroom. 

What he finds is nothing short of an inferno. The back wall has been completely eaten away, he can actually see into the building next door between the flames, most of the ceiling engulfed as well. He can barely make out a person on the bed, undoubtedly unconscious, and he moves quickly because he knows there's not much time. He pulls the figure off the bed as gently but quickly as he can, and not having enough room to maneuver her body starts dragging her feet first, trying to get to the relative safety of the hallway. He hears it before he sees it, the cracking sound of structural integrity giving way, and it feels like everything slows down as he realizes the ceiling is going to come down on top of them. He falls forward, covering the woman's body with his own, bracing his weight on his elbows.

The pain is excruciating as most of the ceiling, and whatever furniture was on the floor above, comes crashing down around them.

 _I'm going to die here,_ he thinks uselessly, feeling the heat start to surround them, finding himself completely unable to move, staring into the face of an unconscious stranger.

He closes his eyes, even though he's struggling to stay conscious, closes them and pictures Cas as he left him, asleep in a shaft of sunlight that morning, maybe dreaming of Dean and the life they'd build together.

_I should never have left him. I thought I'd have more time. Why did I waste so much time?_

He can feel himself slipping, but then he hears a high-pitched sound, softly at first, then louder, the two tone wailing of his PASS alert that means he's been immobile for thirty seconds.

_I should have listened to what he had to tell me. Angel. Cas._

In his head it sounds like it's saying "I'm here, I'm here, I'm HERE, I'M HERE" and then it changes to a shrill high pitched chirping -- and just before he passes out he thinks he hears a shout.

 _Cassiel_ is the last thing he thinks before he slips into the void.

*******

Cas has his car packed and has been ready to leave now for hours, but he can't seem to make himself get in the car

He tries to tell himself it's better this way, better that Dean left the way he did instead of letting Cas explain. He imagines how Dean would have reacted to his story: probably choosing to play along and humor Cas, while slowly withdrawing himself from his life, turning into a ghost that occupies a much larger space in Cas's life than before. Given that, the sudden severing he'd woken to this morning was probably the kindest route. 

All morning as he packed he kept praying to receive a text interrupting him: an answer, an explanation, some completely innocuous reason that would explain everything; but it's nearly two o'clock now and there's been nothing. He shouldn’t delay any longer, but keeps finding reason to. He hasn't even decided where to go next, but he thinks the best course of action is to just drive, get on the highway without a set direction, get as far away as he can. He knows he should reach out to Gabriel, to talk to him about what's happened, but he can't stomach it right now. He decides he'll just text him to say he's leaving, that he'll be in touch when he's ready. 

He puts his phone on the charger as he starts cleaning out his fridge, refusing to look too closely at the remnants of his meal with Dean, the memory of them eating together here still too sharp, too real, too painful. Throwing away what remains of the blueberry pie feels like the final act, and he struggles to maintain his composure. 

He should definitely text Gabriel now, but he wants to lie down instead. He feels suddenly exhausted, the weight of his sadness crushing him. He should nap before he gets in the car to drive, he decides, so he trudges upstairs to lay out on the bare mattress, hugging the pillow Dean used the night before into his chest and drifting into a fitful sleep.

Downstairs on the kitchen counter, his phone lights up with an incoming call. Then a text. Then another. 

*******

At first Dean drifts in and out of consciousness, but every time he starts to surface all he knows is pain and the sounds of people shouting, so he succumbs to the blackness again readily. At some point he thinks he hears Sam's voice, but it's hard to focus and he can't quite follow the thread of it so he stops trying. 

Later, he surfaces again, tentatively, as though testing the waters. It's better, now, and he feels like he's floating in some state of in-between. All he can hear are hushed voices and the sounds of machinery, beeping. It's nicer here, not as dark as where he was, not so full of pain as before, and so he allows himself to stay. 

He thinks he dreams, but they make no sense: snippets of places he's never been, things he's never seen crowd into wandering mind. Green, he thinks, so much green and water, vast oceans of it off towering cliffs. It's unknown but feels familiar, though he can't imagine why, and he's not alone. 

He thinks that Cas is here -- but he's not himself, more like a pulse of white light dancing just outside of Dean's reach, and each time he holds out a hand the light drifts farther away, dancing out of reach like an aimless firefly. Dean is entranced by it, watching it flit along the coasts of wherever they are, always coming back to Dean but never close enough to touch.

"Cas?" he asks the next time it gets close enough, and it flickers though it still doesn't come too close. "Is that really you?" 

There's no answer, and Dean drifts out again, his consciousness carried away like the tide going out, and he has no idea how much time has passed when it comes back in again. 

The light is always there when he does, each time out of reach, but Dean is comforted by it nonetheless as he drifts in and out on his sea of numbed pain.

*******

It's dark when Castiel wakes again, his restless dreams full of places he hasn't been to in centuries. He rolls off the mattress and heads down the stairs, making a beeline for the kitchen where he's left his phone, knowing it's time to text Gabriel.

He has four missed calls and eight text messages.

"Dean," he whispers to himself, practically crying with relief at the thought that he's overreacted. 

Three of the calls are from Jess, and one is from Sam. There's a voicemail, but he doesn't listen to it yet despite his confusion, instead opening up the text messages -- which are all from Jess over the last several hours.

_Cas call me_

_Cas where are you call me please_

_Cas something's happened_

_I don't want to tell you in a text_

_Cas where are you_

_I'm at the hospital now please call_

_Cas?_

_Cas please_

He panics, guilt flooding him at the thought that he was just going to leave and never talk to her again. Worried that something has happened to Sam, he clicks on the voicemail icon and holds it to his ear.

"Hey Cas. Listen, I'm not sure why you're not around but I hope you're okay." Jess sniffles on the recording, and from the sound of her voice she's been crying a great deal. "I need you to come to the hospital when you get this, please Cas. There's been an accident. I don't want to tell you in a message but Cas..." and there's a shuffling sound as she puts the phone down, and he can hear the muffled sound of her crying before she apparently collects herself and resumes speaking. "It's Dean. He got hurt on a fire call, Cas. It's bad. You need to get here as soon as you can."

The timestamp on the voicemail is 7:42. The calls and texts started at 3:30. He looks at the clock on the microwave, the digital 9:07 staring at him in silent judgement, telling him it might be too late.

He flies out of the house without even locking the door behind him, racing to the hospital as quickly as he can as he simultaneously prays to the father he stopped believing in at the same time he lost his wings.

*******

He pulls into the parking garage, grateful that he keeps his access badge in the glove compartment, since it's well after visiting hours and he doesn't even know exactly where Dean is, though he can guess. He slips the lanyard for his badge over his head as he gets out of the car, running to the elevator and frantically jabbing at the button. The garage is practically deserted at this time of night, so when the elevator arrives the doors slide open on an empty car and he hits the button that he knows will take him to the Intensive Care floor. 

The elevator opens up at the end of a hallway, and he doesn't see anyone immediately so he makes his way to the station midway down the hall. The nurse there is actually someone he vaguely knows, and that's good because it will save time.

"I think I know why you're here," she says, looking at him sadly. She gestures down the hallway behind her. "They're down there, last room on the right." 

He moves gingerly down the hallway, dreading what he'll find. He takes a deep breath and heads into Dean's room, pulling the door completely shut behind him. He's not prepared for the sight before him.

Dean is lying in a reclined position on the bed, covered with tubes and wires and wrapped in bandages so numerous that there's barely any skin showing. No one else is in the room, so he quickly tiptoes in and grabs the chart from the end of the bed, flipping through it and surveying the damage, which is even more extensive than it looks. 

Dean is lucky to be alive.

Dean probably won't survive the night. 

He looks at the pale figure on the bed, tangled in wires and tubes and bandages. It isn't enough that Dean has consumed all his thoughts for months despite being out of his reach, not enough that he's had a taste of what it would be like for them to be able to love one another, not enough to have that fantasy ripped away from him in the cold light of morning. 

Now Castiel has to watch him die. 

He feels a helplessness even greater than that of two hundred years in a cramped cell of utter solitude, knowing his lover would grow old, feeling abandoned; a feeling worse than hundreds of years wandering the Earth, never hoping to find him again. A helplessness greater than the one he felt earlier this same day, when he knew that the soul he considered a part of him didn't love him in return.

He moves closer to the bed, reaching out, touching a small spot on the back of Dean's hand, using his grace to look at Dean's soul.

It flickers dimly, duller than he's ever seen it, and he knows what that means. 

Suddenly nothing matters to him anymore except the one thing he knows he has to do.

He gets closer to the bed, gingerly reaching out to touch Dean someplace uncovered by bandages until he finally reaches across his body to grasp his left shoulder. As he leans over him Castiel stares at his face, and knowing that he's beyond anything resembling consciousness places a gentle kiss on his forehead before he closes his eyes, concentrating. 

"I love you," he says for the last time, and wishes he'd ever had an opportunity to say it so Dean could hear.

The small vestige of grace still within him pulses and strengthens as he focuses all of its energy into the body on the bed. This is no minor miracle like he's performed during his long tenure here on Earth, and he concentrates on driving every bit of his remaining grace into the dying human soul before him. An outsider would see a strange glow in the room were they to glance in the windows, but nothing disturbs him as he forces every shred of his divinity into Dean until he collapses onto the floor, exhausted.

"What have you done, Castiel?" he hears a frantic voice say from behind him, a voice he knows despite the fact that it doesn't belong here. Moving into a sitting position on the floor, back against the bedframe, he bends his knees and rests his head between them, feeling dizzy. He's asked thousands of patients about that symptom, but has never before felt it himself. It's strange. 

"Castiel?" the voice persists, and he feels hands on either side of his head, raising it up until he's looking into the eyes of Gabriel. "Can you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"What have you _done_?" he screeches, glancing at the prone figure still unmoving on the bed. "Your grace flared up so brightly I had to come investigate, and then it was gone. Castiel! How could you?" He helps him stand now, then walks him to the chair in the corner, sitting him down. Cas puts his head in his hands.

"I made a choice, Gabriel," he mumbles lowly, knowing full well that he can hear. "I exhibited free will."

"Do you know what this _means_?"

"Of course I know!" he snaps back, sitting up and glaring at the archangel, who stares back at him incredulously. "Don't you understand? I have been in exile here for hundreds of years, never able to get close to anyone. I have to lie to everyone I meet, no one can ever know what I am or what I've been through. I've been cut off from Heaven completely, with only enough power to ensure that I continue to live forever -- _alone_. You told me there was hope for me if I found my soulmate again, that I could become..." but he chokes up and shakes his head. It doesn't matter. "That life will never come to pass for me, Gabriel."

"It could have! Maybe not in this form, but surely in another lifetime..."

"NO!" Cas shouts, now strong enough to stand, hands fisted at his sides, body a lean pillar of defiance. " _'I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.'_ I'm not actually _living_ life, I'm just passing through it, day to day to day in a constant state of waiting. I am rejecting that. Even if Dean and I were together, I could never be anything to him but a _lie._ "

Gabriel looks at him somberly. Cas marvels at how, of all the heavenly creatures that could have learned to feel emotions as he has, that one of them would be Gabriel, the messenger of God -- and yet there he stands, sadness personified. 

"Sartre also said _'man is a useless passion'_ but that never deterred you in the slightest from falling in love with one of them." 

"Yes, well, Sartre wasn't even born when that happened so..."

"You'll _die_ ," Gabriel spits out vehemently, eyes boring into Castiel's until he sighs and lowers his gaze.

"I know."

"But you have _no soul_ , Castiel. You will not enter into Heaven as your human will. This body will die, and you will pass into nothingness. You will cease to exist, forever."

Castiel closes his eyes and sighs.

"That sounds...peaceful. To rest, at long last, and finish hoping."

Gabriel looks at the man on the bed, his human soul bright and whole and glowing in a way only visible to angels, his body still battered but less so than before, well on the road to recovery. 

"I wish you had called me. I could have healed him, there was still a chance..."

"Gabriel. _No_. We...we spent the night together last night and I thought...I thought the time had come. For us to be together, _finally_. I tried to tell him the truth about myself and he..."

"You did _what_? Why would you do that?"

"Because I'm tired of living a _lie_! I wanted to be able to tell him about myself, to finally be free of this _burden_ , to share it with the person I love in the hope it would be lessened somehow. But it doesn't matter. He didn't believe me, Gabe. Why would he? It's insanity, and he knew it. I woke up this morning and he was _gone_."

"Then you should have let him _die."_

"For what _reason,_ Gabriel? For him to be reincarnated again someday, in another life that I might never even know about? Or worse, to find him and be rejected again? How many times between this one and _eternity_ would you have me suffer that?"

Gabe's head droops.

"I wish you'd never suffered any. I wish he'd chosen you." 

"Yes, well. The downside of free will is that everyone can make choices for themselves without having to account for the consequences to others."

"And the upside?"

Castiel walks to the bed and strokes the hair from Dean's head where it pokes out of the bandages, sighing.

"Freedom, in so many forms. And now I have mine."

"Oh, Cassie. I never wanted this for you." Gabe says, and if Castiel didn't know better he'd think he was on the verge of tears. "And now? Your grace won't preserve you anymore. You won't be invulnerable. You'll grow old, just like any other human. Is there anything I can do?"

Castiel traces the line of Dean's jaw, the cuts and bruises already faded, and he wonders how the doctors will explain this miracle to themselves tomorrow. 

"Yes," he says, moving away from the bed and standing in front of Gabriel. "Your mark. I want you to remove it."

"Cassie," Gabe gasps, eyes wide in shocked disbelief. "I _can't_!" 

"Yes, you can. I don't want you watching over me anymore, Gabe. It's too painful, for both of us. You'll always remind me of what I lost, and I'll always remind you of..."

"What I took away." They look at one another across the room, but the space between them encompasses so much more than distance.

"I know you were following orders. I know you have regrets. But nothing will ever take those away, Gabe. Nothing but time. I don't want you to know about me anymore. It's time we say goodbye."

"Oh, Cassie," Gabe says, and now the eyes of his vessel truly are filled with tears. "Where will you go?" he whispers. Castiel closes his eyes for a minute, the answer to this question he's been pondering all day coming to him clearly. 

"I'm going to go back to where it all started." He glances over to the bed, Dean's skin already looking healthier under the bandages, and then looks Gabe in the eyes. "Will you watch over him for me?"

"That's two things, Cassie."

"Yes, well, I had two wings."

"That is a _low blow_ , Castiel," Gabe says on an exhale, but eventually he breaks eye contact and nods as he places a hand on Castiel's rib cage, a faint glow coming through his fingers as he removes the sigil of his name. Cas leans forward and places a kiss on Gabe's forehead, then walks over to the bed to look at Dean for the last time. Gabe disappears as Castiel leans over to place a kiss on Dean's lips, and then he leaves the room without a backward glance, never noticing that Sam is peering through the crack of the bathroom door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find a video of what a fireman's PASS alert sounds like here:  
> [Chapter 11 Reference](http://zaphodsgirl.tumblr.com/post/166123790882/wondering-what-a-pass-alert-sounds-like-its)


	12. Awakening

“Recall the deeds as if they're all someone else's.” - _The Noose_ , A Perfect Circle

***

Dean is wandering the dream cliffs again when it happens. The light comes suddenly closer than ever before, flitting around his form like it's searching for something. 

"Cas?" he says, trying to follow its movements but it's too fast, getting brighter with each orbit and bigger, too, it seems.

"Cas, what's wrong?" he tries again, but the light suddenly grows so big and bright he has to shield his eyes from it as it finally speaks to him in a whisper.

_I love you._

Something starts to change, and he feels pulled back from the great ocean of his dream, once again tethered to his body though he can't seem to make it move. Everything feels so _heavy_ , the weight of his prone form so great that his limbs are immobile and he can't even open his eyes. 

Voices. He hears voices, they seem to be shouting something, and though he can't really make out the words he recognizes the gravelly timber of one of them. _Cas_. Cas is here. Cas is here, and Dean is alive and he has no idea what's happened to him but knowing Cas is here makes him fight to wake up, to open his eyes, to move his lips and say something.

He feels something on his lips, a light pressure, and then it's gone and the room is quiet but for the sound of footsteps coming closer, and Dean is fighting.

"Oh my god," he hears Sam exclaim on an exhale, and then feels hands running over his limbs, caressing his face -- and finally, _finally_ he gets his mouth to work. 

"Sammy?" he croaks out in a strangled whisper, and he hears him gasp as he manages to crack open his eyes. "Sam?"

"Dean!" Sam cries out, and he's reaching over and hitting something, and Dean hears the distant sound of more footsteps hurrying towards them, then a door opening. Dean can barely see through the slits in his eyes, but he can make out Sam's pale face and Jess's concerned one, both of them drawn and tired.

"Sam, what the fuck happened?" Jess says, looking up at him, and maybe Dean wasn't out that long if Jess is just getting here. Maybe it wasn't as bad as he remembers.

"Cas?" he croaks out, and they both look at him before being shoved aside to make way for a doctor and a nurse, and it's not long before Dean passes out again. 

This time he doesn't dream, and when he wakes up again he's able to open his eyes completely and turn his head, spying Sam in the corner, dozing in a chair. 

"Sam?" he says, and though it comes out as a harsh rasp his brother hears it anyway, sitting bolt upright before rushing over to the side of the bed. 

"Oh my god, Dean, oh my god," he says, clasping Dean's hand and putting the other on his forehead. "You were, I mean we all thought you were, but...shit, I'm sorry, are you okay? What can I get you? The doc said you might be thirsty, I've got some water here..." he lets go of Dean to fumble at the nightstand before he leans back in with a plastic cup and a straw, gently inserting the end of it into Dean's mouth.

The water is cold and crisp and feels so good on his parched throat that he takes several swallows before turning away to indicate that he's done, and Sam puts the cup out of sight. Just that single act is exhausting for him, but he's determined to stay awake for a while.

"Collapse?" he asks, determined to conserve energy, hoping Sam will understand, and he does.

"Jesus Christ, Dean. Yes, the floor above collapsed. Benny and some of the others were coming back in to assist you just as it did; they managed to locate you by your alarm and pull you and a woman out."

"Live?"

"Yeah, man, she lived, she's gonna make it. Everyone came out alive, though you almost didn't."

Dean closes his eyes for a moment and Sam waits.

"Hurt?"

"Uh, actually...no. You're mostly bruised right now, and some minor lacerations, but that's it." That...can't be right. Dean was there, and he knows it had to be so much worse than that. How long has he been out?

"Coma?" he asks quizzically, because that would explain why he's already mostly healed, but Sam just laughs.

"I don't think being unconscious for two days counts as a coma, sorry big guy. No Lifetime Movie for you." Dean can't help but smile a little even though he's terribly confused, but he decides to table that for now.

"Cas?" he says, hoping he's nearby, but knowing he'll come quickly if Sam just calls him. 

Sam's face falls and he puts his head down, resting his elbows on his knees. Dean looks at the top of his head, waiting with growing dread. Has something terrible happened? Why won't Sam answer?

"Where is Cas?" he says more forcefully, and Sam sighs as he rubs his face with both hands before meeting Dean's eyes.

"Can we talk about this later?" Sam asks weakly, and Dean just glares until he gives in. "Cas isn't coming, Dean." He pauses as though he's going to say something more but thinks better of it and closes his mouth again, and Dean doesn't even push because suddenly he's exhausted all over again, hurt and confused and full of so many questions as he stares at the ceiling.

"Dean," Sam ventures quietly. "Let's focus on getting you out of here first, and then we can talk about Cas, okay?" Dean doesn't acknowledge him or answer, just closes his eyes again and drifts away.

*******

Everything the doctor says to Dean is a complete mystery, especially the way she keeps looking at him as if he knows something she doesn't, has some answer to the miracle recovery he made that no one can explain.

They keep him for days just so they can scratch their heads over his condition, and he can't even be angry about it because he's just as confused as they are. Not to mention exhausted, which is apparently the biggest side-effect of a near death experience and a miraculous recovery.

The only thing that makes him impatient, at least while he's awake, is that Sam won't tell him any more about Cas. Why isn't he coming? Did something happen? How did Sam know he wouldn't be there? Questions upon questions upon questions and nary an answer in sight. 

He sleeps a lot during his stay in the hospital, and every time he does he has strange dreams of Castiel. Strange because Dean himself is in some of these dreams, but he's _not_ himself. It's more like he's _Cas_ , seeing everything from _his_ point of view; dreams of people he's never known and places he's only ever seen in books: enormous fields of tulips in bloom like a riot of color against a blue sky, a Shinto shrine with views of snow-capped mountains, the lush and dense green of a distant jungle with a crumbling stone structure rising out of it. And sometimes the cliffs, those great green cliffs on the coasts of his dreams, their continued presence in his subconscious the greatest enigma of them all. Some of the situations confuse him and don't make any sense, and he finds himself pondering over them in the quiet of his waking hours, barely able to grasp the scenes but remembering the emotion in them vividly.

Visitors drift in and out of his room but none of them are the one he most wants to see, until he practically dreads hearing the door open. He suspects that both Jess and Lisa also know what Sam won't say, but apparently they've decided between the three of them not to tell Dean, and it starts to grate on his nerves every time they deflect a question.

By the fourth day he's able to stay awake for hours at a time, and has decided he's officially done with this shit.

"Sam." His brother is dozing in the chair across the room, head resting on his balled up jacket as he sleeps through the _Dr. Sexy_ marathon Dean's been watching for two hours. His nose twitches a little but he doesn't move otherwise, and Dean fishes an ice cube out of his water jug to throw it across the room. "Sam!" 

Sam startles awake, limbs flailing for a second as he rights himself in the chair, finally grasping at its arms for purchase. 

"What? What's wrong?" he asks, flustered.

"Pull that chair over here. It's time for us to talk." Sam looks away as though he's trying to think of an argument, but Dean heads him off at the pass. "Doc said she was going to release me this afternoon, so you can stop with your 'let's talk about this when you're out' rationalization. I want to know where Cas is. Why hasn't he come to see me? I know you and Lisa and Jess all know something. Is he upset? Did he freak out when I got hurt? Did he get fired or something and isn't allowed in the hospital?" He's exhausted every possibility he can think of, but he has a feeling none of them is the correct answer. Sam rests his elbows on his knees, studying his clasped hands. "Sam. Please." His brother takes a deep breath before looking up to meet his gaze.

"Cas is gone, Dean. We don't know where. The day you got...the day of the fire, Jess spent all afternoon texting and calling him, but he never answered. Lisa was so worried about him on your behalf, she thought maybe he'd heard the news and was devastated." He looks away a little sheepishly. "She, uh, she filled us in on the details about your relationship with her and what happened with you and Cas. Don't be mad at her." Dean shakes his head and indicates for Sam to continue. "Anyway, Lisa went to his house that night to check on him, try to get him to come to the hospital with her if he was too distraught to get here, but...there was no answer, and when she tried the door it was open, so she went in, fearing the worst. Dean...it looked like he packed up and left. The furniture was there, but she said all the bookshelves were empty and that creeped her out. She went to look upstairs and the bed was stripped, the closet was empty. He's...he's gone, Dean." 

Dean stares at Sam, trying to process what he's saying. Cas is gone? But why? Where did he go? And why would he leave now, after...after that night? Did he leave because he thought Dean had been killed? Certainly he would have checked first, gotten in touch with Jess, certainly he wouldn't have done something that rash? 

"But he was _here_. I heard his voice. I swear I heard it." Something flashes in Sam's eyes, but he looks away before Dean can figure out what it is.

He leans back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, feeling lost and afraid. Was that his imagination? Did Cas wake up that morning and decide he'd made a huge mistake? Did he leave to get away from Dean, not even knowing what happened? He read Dean's note and decided he'd better get away before he came back?

"Did you guys check my phone?" he asks desperately. "Maybe he left me a message that he had to go somewhere suddenly and we just don't know."

"Dean, he didn't even call the hospital to report that he wouldn't be in for his shifts." 

"Yeah, but Sam, he wouldn't just leave like that. He _wouldn't_. Not after..."

"Dean." 

It's then he realizes he's crying as he speaks, hot tears leaking out of the corners of both eyes. He wipes at them frantically. 

"I don't understand, Sam," he says desperately, and Sam sighs.

"There's...there's more, Dean, but I haven't told Jess and Lisa about it. I don't even know how to tell _you_ about it, because honestly I don't know how to explain it. I've been putting you off for days because I've been trying to figure it out for myself."

"What?" Dean says, trying to sit up in the bed, but at that moment the nurse comes in.

"OK, Mr. Winchester, you're all set to go home! I've got your discharge papers here, and they'll be in with a wheelchair for you in a few minutes, so you should get dressed," she says brightly, putting down the bedrail and helping Dean swing his legs over the side. 

"Uh, I can help him dress, I brought some things for him," Sam says, reaching for a bag by the window.

"Okay, great! The orderly will knock before he comes in, don't worry. I'll just leave these papers here, don't forget to take them with you!" She leaves just as Sam helps Dean stand, letting him lean on him as he gets himself into a pair of boxers, then sweatpants. Dean clutches at his shoulder as Sam turns to grab the shirt he brought, and Sam places his own hand gently over Dean's. 

Dean looks at him for a moment before he nods and shuffles into the bathroom, grabbing the shirt Sam holds out to him as he goes by. He places it on the counter as the motion-activated light comes on, and takes a long look at himself in the mirror. There's still some light bruising on his face, mostly faded, and a lot of minor scratches, but nothing like he expected to see. Except...

"Sam!" he calls out, turning his body sideways and studying himself in the mirror as Sam appears in the doorway behind him. "What the fuck is this?" Sam doesn't look shocked at all, as if he'd been waiting for Dean to notice this.

A raised, red handprint on his left shoulder. 

"Let's get you back to my house, and then I promise I'll tell you everything."

*******

Dean barely registers his wheelchair ride out to the parking garage and Sam's car, hardly even notices the drive to Sam's house, staring out the window at the passing scenery. Now that he's unhooked from all the wires and tubes, away from all the poking and prodding, he tries to assess how he feels. 

Strangely empty, is the answer. He stares at Castiel's house as they drive down Sam's street, its empty driveway a testament to its vacancy.

Sam helps him out of the car after they pull into the garage. It's not that he's unable to walk, but after being prone for several days he feels a little unsteady. The doctor had told him that physically nothing was wrong with him, but his body had still experienced a trauma and would need time to rest. She'd been shaking her head the whole time, still unable to explain how he'd gone from broken legs, skull fracture, ruptured organs and massive internal bleeding to sitting up in bed as if he'd been in a minor fender bender; she'd probably have kept Dean under a microscope for the rest of his life if he'd allow it. 

He sinks into Sam's couch, grateful for its overstuffed cushions and built-in recliners as he makes himself comfortable. Sam busies himself in the kitchen for a few minutes, and Dean can hear him talking lowly to Jess before he comes back into the den and hands Dean a beer before sitting in the armchair to the side of him.

Jess comes in a few minutes later, leaning over to kiss Dean on the forehead before she sits on the other end of the couch, turning to tuck her feet underneath her with her back to the armrest, giving her attention to Sam. Dean takes a swig of his beer, then holds the bottle as he plays idly with the label, waiting for Sam to start talking.

"Jess, I haven't told you this before because, to be honest, I didn't know how. In fact, I still don't, not really. So I'm just going to tell you both everything I saw, and maybe we can all figure it out together. Just...don't interrupt me until I'm finished." 

Dean turns his head to glance at Jess before nodding at Sam to continue. He runs a hand through his hair and takes a swallow of his own beer before he continues.

"The night you woke up Dean, well...the doctor had told us earlier that night that you would probably never wake up again. They'd operated on you twice already, but you were still so critical and..." he takes a huge breath, staring up at the ceiling as he rapidly blinks his eyes before he continues. "Jess had been trying to reach Cas all day, hell I'd even tried to reach him once, and as the night went on she got more and more distraught. 

"Jess kept trying to talk to me, but I think I'd reached a point where I just couldn't respond anymore, and I went into the bathroom just so I could stop looking at you for a few minutes, try to refocus, but I still left the door ajar because I was afraid to shut out the sound of the machines, just, just in case. I'd been sitting on the floor in there so long that the motion light went off, and I heard Jess say she was going to get coffee." 

He shuffles in his seat a little bit before he resumes.

*******

**__** _He hears someone come into the room but thinks it's just another doctor or nurse, shuffling around the bed, checking Dean's chart. There's silence for a few minutes, but Sam just sits in the dark with his elbows around his knees, sick at heart and full of hopelessness. He hears something whispered but he can't make it out, and then a strange glow fills the room, illuminating even the darkness around him._

_Sam jumps to his feet, the bathroom light coming on again barely registering in the light from the room. He throws open the door, seeing Castiel with his back to Sam, leaning over his brother on the bed, both of them bathed in a pool of bright light. He doesn't know what's happening, wants to rush over and push Castiel away, but something stops him. Dean's face. Dean's face doesn't look so battered suddenly, and he stands frozen. Something tells him not to stop this, and he retreats back into the bathroom, pulling the door almost completely closed as he stands there with his eye to the gap, watching what happens._

_It takes several minutes, long enough for the bathroom to go dark with Sam's stillness again, and then the glowing stops as Castiel collapses on the far side of the bed. Suddenly another person appears out of the thin air over by the door, facing Cas and screaming at him about grace and a bunch of other stuff that Sam can't understand but commits to memory. He helps Cas to a chair and they talk for a while, heatedly at first, and then sadly. Cas stands up and walks over to the bed, reaching out to touch Dean before turning back to the stranger. The man does something to Cas that Sam can't see, but it has a small glow much like what he's already witnessed, and as Cas turns away from the man to look at Dean, Sam realizes that the man is staring right at him. He freezes, caught, somehow knowing this man sees him even in the dark through the small slit of the doorway, but he just winks at Sam before he disappears again. Sam stands in shock, barely registering that Cas kisses Dean goodbye and leaves again._

_Sam rushes out of the bathroom and over to his brother, standing in awed shock at the state of him. Even with all the bandages he can tell that Dean is in much better shape, and his heartrate is strong and steady, but there's a mark that looks burned into his arm where Cas had touched him. Sam starts inspecting his limbs, running his hands over Dean's arms, but he's still completely unprepared for the sound of his name on Dean's lips._

*******

Sam stops talking, his head falling back against the top of the armchair, and no one speaks for a few minutes. Dean rubs the handprint on his arm, thinking. It doesn't hurt, though he swears it warms when he touches it.

"Is this the part where we can talk again?" Jess asks tentatively, and Sam picks his head up to nod. Dean feels her gaze on him and turns to face her. "I heard him shout as I was coming back up the hallway, and I could hear commotion at the station behind me, and I thought..." she pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I thought the worst had happened. I was not prepared for what I saw when I came back into the room, and then the staff were there." She looks at Sam again, resting her chin on her knees. "I never saw him come out, Sam, but there was a staircase right at the end of that hallway. He must have known Dean would come to and didn't want to run into staff rushing down to the room." She stands up from the sofa and starts pacing the area behind the couch, arms crossed over her chest as she processes everything. 

"Dean?" Sam says quietly. "What did Cas mean when he said he thought you'd both finally be together, but you chose differently in the morning? Lisa said you came home conflicted about something, but that you were planning to go back there before the call came in."

"I have no idea, Sammy. He was still asleep when I woke up, and I left him a note telling him I'd be back, that there was a lot for us to talk about." Sam looks like he's processing this information, trying to find the solution. Dean just sits, going over the entire scene in his mind, all the things Sam overheard, trying to find a thread to weave them all together.

"The other man. Cas called him Gabriel?" he asks finally, and Sam nods. Gabriel. "Isn't that the name of Cas's brother?" Jess stops pacing, coming around to Dean's side and sitting on the arm of the sofa next to him as Sam looks to her for clarification. 

"Yes," she says, turning to Dean. "That's what he told me before, though we'd never met him." 

"Castiel said he'd been here for hundreds of years," Dean says slowly, thinking. "Cut off from _Heaven._ " 

_I'm an angel. Or rather, I used to be, long ago._

"That's what I heard. I know, it sounds crazy."

"It sounds crazy, but a few days ago we were waiting for Dean to die and now he's sitting on our couch." 

"I think she's got you there, Sam."

"So what does it _mean?_ " Sam says in exasperation, but something is niggling at Dean, something in the dreams he's been having lately, and he closes his eyes to concentrate. Gabriel. He's seen someone in his dreams as Cas, someone with that name. 

"Was the man you saw about five foot eight? Dirty blonde hair grown out long, hazel eyes? Kind of smirky looking?" Sam sits up in his chair and leans forward.

"Well, I'm not sure what color his eyes were, but the rest fits. How do you know that, Dean? You were still unconscious. Have you met him before?"

"No, no, I haven't met him before. But I've _seen_ him." 

"I don't understand," Jess says from between them. 

"Ever since I...woke up, I guess, I've been having these odd dreams. Odd because I'm not myself in them. I'm _Cas_. I think of myself as Cas in the dreams, seeing things like he must have, and there’s a guy he's called Gabriel that looks like that. Sometimes he shows up suddenly like Sam described, usually after..." but he trails off, something suddenly clicking for him. 

"What, Dean?" 

"Usually after he prays," Dean says on an exhale, and he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the sofa. A feeling of overwhelming guilt washes over him, because in the face of this miracle he realizes that Cas was trying to tell him the truth, as apocryphal as it may be. "Gabriel is the name of an angel, isn't it?" He's sure they must both be looking at him like he's gone insane, but he did just come back from the dead so he'll let it slide.

"It is," Sam says, "Gabriel was an archangel. The one who foretold the birth of Jesus I think." 

"Yes," Jess breathes out, "the Messenger of God. Why is that important?"

"The night before, Cas said some strange things to me, and...I freaked out. What he was saying, it sounded completely insane, and I couldn't figure out what his reasoning was." He sighs heavily. "I think he might have been trying to tell me something. Something unbelievable, but true. That he used to be an angel."

They all look at each other.

"It can't be," Jess says. "It just can't." 

"That was one of the things he said to Gabriel," Sam muses, as though searching his memory. "That he'd wanted to tell you the truth about himself, but in the morning you were gone." 

Dean is frantically grasping at every reference he can think of to Gabriel, searching the catalogue of his dreams over the last several days, and on a whim he blurts out the first thing he can think of.

"I pray to the angel Gabriel."

"How did you know to do that?" an angry new voice says from near the fireplace, and Dean opens his eyes.

"That's him," Sam cries out, pointing with excitement as Jess leaps to her feet, but Dean ignores them both.

"I saw it in a dream," Dean says, "but I don't think it was _my_ dream. I think the dreams I've been having...they belong to _Cas."_

Gabriel sighs, looking at his feet as he leans against the mantle. 

"They're not dreams, Deano. They're _memories._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find reference pics for this chapter here:  
> [Chapter 12 Reference](http://zaphodsgirl.tumblr.com/post/166123852147/when-dean-starts-dreaming-castiels-memories-he)


	13. Discovery

“You're a ghost, and I love you. You will haunt me forever. Haunt me, forever.” - _Stolen Ghost Waltz_ , Kate Mann

***

"Memories?" Dean parrots before completely losing the power of speech. He drops his head, staring into his lap, overcome and confused. Jess regains her composure with lightning speed.

"You must be Gabriel," she says. "This is Sam, and I'm his wife, Jess. It, uh, seems you know Dean already," though she sounds unsure. "Won't you sit down? Would you like a drink?"

"Jess," Sam hisses, "he's an _angel_ , he doesn't want a cup of _coffee_!" Gabriel chuckles, practically skipping to sit in the armchair on the across the coffee table from Sam.

"Well, normally I _love_ coffee," he says to Sam as he places his left ankle on his right knee. "But I think this conversation necessitates something of the alcoholic persuasion?" he asks, turning to Jess, who smiles. 

"Sam, come help me."

"Wha..." is all Sam gets out before Jess grabs him by the arm and drags all six foot plus of him bodily into the kitchen.

"She's feisty. I like her," Gabe says, but Dean can't even crack a smile.

"Whose memories? What's happened to Cas? Why did he leave? What did he do to me? Where's he _gone?"_ He knows it's a lot at once but he's playing the law of percentages, hoping he'll get the answer to at least one. Gabriel turns serious in the face of Dean's questions, tapping the arm of the chair he's sitting in.

"Cas. He left. He's done. He healed you. Switzerland, at least I think," Gabe rattles off without missing a beat. "Why do you want to know so badly? You took off at first light. To be honest I'd like to smite you where you sit." Dean feels a bit like he deserves it, honestly. 

"I was going to come back. I left him a note! I wanted..." he's interrupted by Jess bringing Gabe a beer, who thanks her with a smile before she sits in her previous spot on the couch, just to his left. Sam follows with fresh drinks for the rest of them, and Dean waits until they're all seated again before he speaks.

"Please. I don't know what happened to make Cas think otherwise, but I need him, Gabe. I _need_ him." Gabe gives him a long, searching look, as if he's reading Dean down to his core. He must be convinced by whatever he sees, because he finally starts talking again.

"Alright. I'll try to explain what's happened, but you might not believe a bunch of it." 

"I think we're beginning to reevaluate our belief system in this house," Jess says, and Gabe winks at her. 

"Sam heard him say he was _going back to where it all started_ ," Dean says, "why is that _Switzerland?"_ Gabe takes a sip of his drink, wiping his mouth before he answers.

"It's only a guess, actually," he says, and Dean's heart sinks. "He was kind of... _born_ there, you might say."

"Kind of?" 

"Well, inasmuch as a celestial being can be born into a human form, yes." Dean rubs his eyes, head spinning. 

"I don't understand any of this," Jess says. "Cas is a _celestial_ _being_? It doesn't make any _sense_. Why would a celestial being be working as a nurse in fucking California?"

"Jess, _language_ ," Sam hisses again, but Gabriel is actually laughing.

"Oh, you're a peach. Cassie always spoke fondly of you, girlie, and I can see why. The answer is because Cassie's always been a grade A weirdo, even when he was a full-fledged angel."

"Was?" Sam croaks out, and Dean's glad they're asking questions because he seems to have lost the ability to talk again. "What do you mean, _was_?"

Gabe rolls his beer bottle between his hands, watching its movement as if he's considering. 

"A long time ago, he had a different name. _Cassiel_ , just one angel in a heavenly host of thousands. The angel of tears, patron angel of downtrodden souls, among them the unjustly persecuted. All of which seems so horribly... _ironic_ , given that he was persecuted by Heaven in a way that, over the years, I've come to view as unfair." 

"Persecuted for what?" Jess says, almost angry, and Gabe shoots her a look of admiration where she sits on the couch near him.

"He fell in love with a human. That's where it began, at least. It led him to make a unique request from the council of archangels, something none had ever asked before: to have his angelic grace transmuted into a human form with a human soul, so that he could live out the rest of his life on Earth with his lover, and then eternity with them in Heaven." Sam and Jess both look at Dean, but Gabe clucks his tongue. "Not Deano, here. Or, not yet anyway."

"What do you mean?" Sam asks, glancing at Dean again before giving his attention back to Gabe. "There was someone before Dean?" 

"Yes," Dean says, finally finding his voice. "I told you about it, Sam, the night I came over to talk to you about...well, everything. That Cas mentioned he'd loved someone a long time ago, and no one had ever been able to replace him."

"How long ago?" Jess asks Dean, but it's Gabriel who answers.

"About four hundred and fifty years." They all turn to stare at him until Sam breaks the silence.

"I think we're gonna need a lot more to drink."

"Truer words were never spoken kiddo, because I haven't even begun to break your brain yet. Cassie's request was denied by the archangels, and when he was defiant they imprisoned him until long after his lover had died of old age. When his term was over, they expected him to fall back in line, meekly chastened."

"I'm guessing _that_ didn't happen," Jess says under her breath.

"Right in one, girlie. So they told him he would be forcibly reconditioned and returned to the host regardless, but he argued against that as well. So they decreed that he lose much of his grace and be banished to Earth, renamed Castiel to reflect his shame."

"You did that, didn't you?" Dean asks quietly, something he'd felt in all those fragments of memory, something alluded to during the conversation overheard by Sam. "You carried out his punishment." Gabriel's hung head is enough of an answer, and when he speaks again all trace of braggadocio is gone.

"Soon after, I started to experience...guilt. I desired greatly to understand what was happening to me, what had happened to him. You see, we were not created with emotions or free will as the human souls were, only the need to follow orders, to be cogs in the great machinations of Heaven. To find myself having questions, having feelings -- it led me to seek out some...answers, and then to seek out Cassie. That's where Switzerland comes in, though it wasn't called that yet. That was where he'd landed on Earth, and he'd been hiding in the forests there, invisible to the humans in the nearby village but still watching over them." Gabe finishes his beer and places the empty bottle on the table in front of him, but gestures for Jess to be still when she moves to go get him another. "I came to make amends and give him a gift, so that he could move among humanity and have some semblance of life." 

"Gift?" Sam asks, unable to hide his curiosity, and Gabe smiles sadly.

"I cannot create life like Our Father does, not truly, but I was able to craft flesh from the earth that could be inhabited by an angel's grace, thus giving it life: first for Cassie, then much later for myself," he says, gesturing at his own form. "Angels usually inhabit human bodies like a parasite into a willing host, because we require permission to do so -- but then the human soul takes a back seat while the angel drives, and their grace keeps the human form in stasis. Cassie wouldn't take a vessel after he fell, because to do so meant depriving a human soul of its own life, its own body. So he was simply _existing_ there in the forests, invisible to humanity, lonely and without purpose."

"So you gave him the means to live among the humans and find one. I'm going to guess that he's always been some kind of healer? Being a nurse now is probably not something he chose on a whim," Jess says thoughtfully.

"Bingo, little lady. Depending on the region and the era, Cassie's always managed to have that profession in one way or another. His grace was very limited, only enough really to preserve his vessel for eternity and allow him to do small things that no one else would ever notice, but that's what he did."

"Heaven turned their collective back on him, his lover was long dead, and he still chose to do good for humanity?" Sam asks in awe, and Gabe nods. 

"Why?" Jess asks. "Why would he bother with us, after being close to a human brought him so much pain?"

"Let's say he was...looking for something. Or someone." Gabe looks pointedly at Dean, who stares back at him in shock.

"But why me?" Dean asks, although deep down there's a part of him that knows, that has figured it out but is too afraid to say. 

"I've been asking myself the same question. You're not my favorite person for obvious reasons," Gabe says, glaring at Dean again before his gaze softens a little. "The human soul is immortal, Deano. So when Cassie's lover died his soul went to Heaven, and there it stayed until it decided the time had come to be reborn. Yes," he says, pointing at Sam who had opened his mouth to ask a question, "they do that for a variety of reasons."

"And you think that I...you think I'm..." 

"I don't think, Deano. I _know_. And so did Cassie, from the first day he met you." He stands from the armchair, passing Jess on the couch to stand closer to Dean. He looks up at him, the archangel of Heaven that's standing in the middle of his brother's living room like something out of an episode of Twin Peaks.

"Cassie would _hate_ me for this, but I hate that he's been suffering for so long, and that you spurned his efforts to lay the truth at his feet. So I'm going to give it to you." 

Gabriel places two fingers on Dean's forehead, and everything goes black.

*******

**__** _There's a sensation inside him of something blooming, like flowers opening their petals in the spring sun, exposing their faces to the waking world. Suddenly the soul inside him is no longer dormant, no longer quiet, and as it opens up within his consciousness the first thing he notices is the cliffs, the familiar landscape of all his dreams. He is of two minds at the moment: the mind of the soul inside him that lived an entire life here, and the mind of himself, of Dean, hovering just behind it and watching everything come to pass: how Cassiel came to Fintan in dreams, how they grew to love one another, the request Fintan made, and then the terrible heartache as he lived and died alone when Cassiel never returned. He journeys with that soul into its Heaven, a hyper realized version of the place they'd been before, and watches as Fintan goes from solitude to companionship, a lover created by Heaven from his own desire, how that companion changes over time until eventually it turns into a form he recognizes all too well._

_Castiel, just as Dean knew him on Earth, is the other occupant of Fintan's Heaven, and everything makes sense when he sees Gabriel appear to them in his angelic form. Hundreds of years pass there in Heaven, and Fintan is happy for a long time; but a realization starts to nag at him, slowly building, tugging at the back of his mind until he's finally forced to acknowledge its existence._

_"You're not the real Cassiel," he says one day, not phrased as a question since he already knows the answer, has really always known it, and just needs to say it aloud._

_"No," the form lying in his arms says. "I never have been." Fintan strokes his hair, pondering, running his fingers down the skin of his arms, his back._

_"And you never will be, no matter how much I wish it," he finally concludes, and the figure nods against his chest before sitting up to look at him. "Was he even real?" Fintan asks sadly, surprised when Cassiel nods again in silent acknowledgement._

_"He is waiting for you, you know. Down there, somewhere," the form that is not Cassiel says, tracing a finger in circles on Fintan's chest, around his heart._

_"But how can I find him?" he says desperately. "What do I do?"_

_"You'll never find him if you don't start looking, and the only way to do that is to be reborn. As to that...it's simply a matter of deciding. It's how all things work here: free will." Fintan looks at him, green eyes piercing blue. He reaches up to cup his cheek and bring him close enough for a kiss as he closes his eyes and then disappears, giving up his Heaven._

_Fintan's soul is reborn on Earth on January 24th, 1979, and remembers nothing._

*******

Dean opens his eyes with a gasp, no idea how much time has passed, but it's getting dark outside now. He's lying back on the sofa, covered with a blanket, and as he throws it off himself and stands up he realizes that he feels completely fine again. He hears voices in the kitchen, and he slowly makes his way there to be greeted by Sam and Jess huddled together over pizza and beer. 

"What the hell?" he manages to croak out, and both of them look up.

"Dean!" Sam says, jumping up and grabbing him by the shoulders. "It's been hours!"

"I saw...I think I saw..." he trails off, not sure how to explain, and lets Sam guide him to a stool at the counter. Jess puts a couple of slices of pizza and a glass of water in front of him.

"Try to eat something, clear your head a little." 

Sam nods, and Dean rubs at his left arm without thinking.

“What did you see?” Jess asks softly, "when you were..."

“I think...it was weird, like I was watching the history of myself, only not myself. Some kind of weird soul retrospective. I saw how they...how _we_ met, everything we had together and then what happened after." He puts his face in his hands. "Christ. I don't know what to do with this."

Dean puts his face in his hands, trying desperately to figure out what went wrong.

"I still don't know why Cas would _leave_ ," he says, looking up, the tone of defeat evident in his voice. "We're soulmates, and he knew the day he met me. I finally got myself to a place to tell him how I feel and he _left me_. Why would he do that if he's been waiting for me for five hundred years?"

"What was in your note?" Jess asks gently, covering one of his hands with her own. 

"It said I didn't know how long I'd be, but I'd definitely be back, and that I would listen. I was so messed up that morning, because I thought he was _nuts_ , but I wanted to give him a chance to explain. I thought I needed some space to clear my head first, so I went home to clean up and change, grab some clothes. Benny called while I was there."

"Where did you leave this note?" Sam asks, and Dean rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed.

"On the pillow next to him, so he'd see it as soon as he woke up."

"Lisa told me when she went looking for him that all the sheets had been stripped from the bed," Jess says. "I don't know if that makes this better or worse."

She looks at Sam, who’s leaning against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest, before looking Dean in the eyes again.

“Would you tell us about it? Everything you saw? Help us to understand?"

Sam perks up and stands at attention, and Dean pushes away the plate in front of him as he nods.

"Maybe you guys should sit down. Do you have anything stronger to drink?"

Sam grabs a bottle of whiskey as Jess sets out glasses for the three of them, and Dean begins to tell them the history of his soul.

*******

Dean spends a fitful night in Sam's guest room, tossing and turning, worried about Cas. He'd spent some time on the phone with Lisa and then Ben, assuring them he was okay, that he'd be by the next day. He doesn't know how to explain everything that's happened to Lisa, and she's so angry on his behalf that he wishes he could tell her _something_ \-- but he and Sam and Jess all agree that no one else would believe everything they've learned, even in the face of Dean's miraculous recovery. 

After a night of too little sleep and too many dreams, he shuffles out of the bedroom late the next morning and asks Sam to take him home. Except it doesn't _feel_ like home to him, not anymore. Maybe not for a while. Somehow, he feels that the only place that will ever feel like home is wherever Cas is. 

Except right now, he has no idea _where_ Cas is. 

Lisa hugs him tightly at the front door, so hard he can barely breath, and he finally picks her up bodily to walk her backwards into the house so he can shut the door. She pulls away, searching his face and running her hands down his arms.

"I just can't believe it. I just...I'm so glad, Dean, but I can't believe you're standing here. That you just picked me up. It's going to take me a while to trust it." 

"I know. I still can't believe it myself, don't know how I got so lucky." If Lisa hears the false tone in his voice she doesn't show it, and he hates that he has to lie to her but he knows it's better this way. 

"Let's sit down. I'll make coffee," she says, taking his hand and pulling him into the kitchen, where he takes his usual seat. "Ben is coming home right after school, he can't wait to see you. I never told him..." she trails off for a second, pinching the bridge of her nose and taking a deep breath. "I never told him how bad you were that first day, and now I'm glad I didn't. Both because he never needed to be that scared, and I don't need to explain how you're fine now. You won't ever tell him, will you?" 

"No, Lis, he doesn't need to know that." She nods tightly in acknowledgement before busying herself with the coffeepot, then sitting across from him as it brews. 

"Dean, I didn't want to talk to you about it in the hospital," she says, looking down at her hands, "but do you have any idea what happened to Cas? Jess was so frantic when she couldn't reach him that I panicked, I thought something happened, and then the door was open and when I walked in and saw the empty shelves and..."

"No," Dean interrupts, cutting her off more abruptly than he meant to. "I, uh, I mean Jess, she managed to get a hold of his brother," and it's not completely a lie so it sounds less false than his earlier statement. "He was confused, too. Said he'd try and get in touch with him, find out what happened."

"Do you think he got spooked?" Lisa asks gently. "What exactly did you _say_ that night?" Dean rubs his face with both hands as the coffee pot beeps and Lisa gets up again to pour them each a cup. He tells her everything that happened that night, skipping over the more intimate details that are for him alone, and the details of what Cas said about himself. She reaches across the counter to place a hand over his. "Don't be upset, ok? But it sounds like _maybe_ you guys didn't do a whole lot of...talking. When he woke up in the morning maybe he was confused and unsure, read your note and bolted. I'm not saying he did the _right_ thing, in fact I'm kind of _furious_ with him over it -- but I'm trying to see things from his point of view, and it's possible you didn't make your intentions very clear. Maybe he thinks..."

"That I was just going to come back to break things off?" Lisa shrugs.

"Have you tried calling him yourself? I know Sam and Jess haven't had any luck."

"No, my phone was already dead when I left his house that morning, I never charged it before I went to the call. It's probably still in the Impala."

She stands and reaches up above the fridge, tossing him a set of keys. "Sam brought it here after...well. Go out and find your phone. I'll make some lunch, you can charge it while we wait for Ben to come home." He nods before he gets up to head into the garage, and he takes a minute to get into his Baby and sit in the driver's seat, running his hands over the wheel and tilting his head back onto the seat as he breathes in the comforting scent of her leather. He checks the glove box, and sure enough his phone is right where he left it. He grabs it and heads back into the house, where he plugs it into the charger on the kitchen counter just as Lisa puts a sandwich with some chips in front of his chair.

"Put it in airplane mode once it comes back on," Lisa suggests. "It'll charge faster." 

"Thanks," he says, even the word _airplane_ filling him with dread, since he detests the thought of flying even though he never has.

They eat in silence for a few minutes, and Dean hates this current awkwardness between them -- something that wasn't there when they knew their relationship was over, but has sprung from his miraculous recovery from certain death. If he hadn't been recently indoctrinated to the greater mysteries in the universe, he might think that's the strangest thing to happen to him this week.

"What will you do now?" she asks as she collects his empty plate and gets him another soda out of the fridge. 

"Don't take this the wrong way," he says hesitantly, "but I think I'm going to move in with Sam." She looks hurt for a moment, then steels herself and nods. "It's for the best, Lis. We're not together that way anymore, and even not knowing what's going on with Cas, I just..." 

"No, I get it," she says, sitting back down and placing her hands over his, clasped together on the countertop. "I'm not gonna make you sleep on the couch, either, so I get it. This is what has to happen anyway, regardless of what's going on with other people in our life."

"I can still, I mean, if it's okay with you I'd still like to come over and watch Ben when you have night classes and help him with his homework?"

She gets up from her seat and comes around the counter to wrap him in a hug, burying her face in his neck. 

"Oh, Dean, of _course_ that's okay with me, and Ben will be thrilled that you're not really going away. You'll see."

"Yeah," he says, voice rough. "Thanks, Lis."

She finally pulls away with a kiss to his temple. "We're still your family, too, no matter what happens. You got that?"

"Yeah," he says, "I got it. At least until things get awkward for _Matthew_ ," he teases, and her laugh breaks the tension just as Ben comes flying through the front door.

"Dean!" he cries out as he runs into the kitchen, and Dean manages to stand up just in time to catch seventy-five pounds of boy in mid-leap. "Mom said you were hurt! You look okay!"

"Yeah, I'm okay, bud," Dean says. "Just had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days, but I mostly slept to get better and now I'm just fine." He disentangles Ben's arms from around his neck, putting him down on the floor and helping him take off his backpack and jacket. "Hey, can we sit on the couch for a couple of minutes? Your mom and I need to talk to you about something."

Ben tilts his head at Dean in a way that seems oddly reminiscent of someone else, and it tugs at his heart for a minute before Ben walks away, sitting next to where Lisa is already perched on the sofa. Dean sits on the coffee table facing both of them, but Ben speaks before he even opens his mouth.

"Is this about how distracted you guys have been? Are you breaking up?"

"Ben!" Lisa says, but somehow Dean isn't the least bit surprised. Ben's a smart kid, observant and intuitive in the same way his mother is, so of course he's figured it out for himself. 

"Well, we actually broke up already, kiddo, right before I got hurt."

Ben looks a little confused as he looks to his mother and then back to Dean.

"So...are you going to go away?" he asks sadly. "Did you come to say goodbye?"

"No, honey, Dean's not going away. He's going to go stay with Uncle Sam and Jess for now, but he'll still come by some nights when Mom works. You'll still see him."

Ben looks at his mom for a long moment, and then to Dean, who gives him a single nod. He purses his lips for a moment, considering.

"You'll still cook when you're here, right? And make pie?" he posits, and Dean can't help but bust out laughing.

"Yeah, buddy, that's all still a go."

"Okay then!" Ben says brightly, and gets up to start on his homework, leaving Dean and Lisa gaping at one another in amusement. Lisa finally shakes her head and stands up, placing a hand on Dean's shoulder. 

"I'm gonna go make dinner, unless you need me to help you pack some things?"

"No, thanks. I got it." She nods before heading into the kitchen, and he heads upstairs. Most of what he grabs are clothes and toiletries, stuffing those into the old duffel bag he's had since high school, when he was still roaming all over the country with their dad. He wonders now if that restlessness he'd always felt was the knowledge that something was missing, something just beyond his reach, something he spent his whole life seeking without knowing he was searching. 

_Cas_.

He knows now what he was searching for, and suddenly the reality of having found it, only to lose it again, weighs upon him so heavily that he has to sit on the bed and put his face in his hands. 

_Where are you, Cas?_

It feels like praying, except that he knows Castiel can no longer hear, if he ever could.

*******

An hour or so later Dean turns down Lisa's offer to stay for dinner, giving both her and Ben a crushing hug as he goes into the garage, throwing his bags into the back of the Impala. He gets back behind the wheel and starts the engine, but just as he goes to back out he hears Ben call his name and race over to the door.

"Dean, you forgot this!" he says breathlessly, handing Dean his phone and his charger. Dean smiles and ruffles his hair in thanks before he backs out of the driveway.

He heads back to Sam's, and as he parks the car on the street he can't help but stare at the front of the house across the street. It looks lifeless in the late afternoon, and if he didn't already know it was empty he thinks he'd sense it. There's nothing left there of Cas; that buzz under the skin he used to feel when Cas was nearby has left him completely. He knows he should go in the house, unpack his things, do something useful. Instead he grabs his phone, deciding that he'll just sit here while he catches up on whatever messages he got in the past week, and then he'll try and call Cas. 

His phone buzzes as he takes it out of airplane mode as a week's worth of voicemails and text messages come through, but there's only one contact he's interested in, and that's the first text string he opens.

_Cas: Dean?_

_Cas: Is everything okay?_

They were sent about an hour after Dean left, and suddenly he's filled again with an unbelievable sense of guilt and despair. He imagines Cas waking up alone and reading his note, maybe taking the cold sheets of his bed as a sign that the tone of Dean's note was foreboding. Sending out a feeler, asking if things were alright with them, never getting an answer, and not knowing why. Jess had told him she'd first called Cas at 3:30, but it had already been hours since he'd woken up to an empty bed with a vague note and nothing else but radio silence.

He presses the call button, putting the phone to his ear and praying to the god he never believed in until now.

_"We're sorry, but the number you have reached is no longer in service. Please check the number..."_

He throws the phone against the passenger door, and then slinks down in the seat, defeated.

Cas is truly gone.


	14. Arrival

“The thundering sea is calling me home, home to you.” - _The Old Ways_ , Loreena McKennitt

***

Dean tries to fall back into the normal routine of his life, but too many things seem to be conspiring against him. First, Benny refuses to let him come back to work right away, despite the fact that he's got a clean bill of health.

"No can do, brother," he drawls while he stands in the kitchen of the firehouse, de-veining shrimp into a colander in the sink. "I don't care what the doctor says, or what type of god reached down from the heavens and sewed you back together. What happened affected more than your body, and you're on a sixty-day leave whether you like it or not."

"Benny, I need to have something to _do._ I've been sitting around Sam's house all week, bored to tears." Benny stops what he's doing, crossing his arms as he turns towards Dean, leaning his hip against the sink as he contemplates him.

"I assume you made a decision, if you're at Sam's and not Lisa's," he said carefully. "Care to tell me why you're not spending all your free time occupied with that, instead?"

Dean hangs his head where he's sitting at the long table, contemplating his coffee cup like the swirled design holds the answers to a myriad of mysteries. "There was...a complication. I don't want to talk about it right now, but I could really use something else to focus on." Benny nods and goes back to his task, deftly cleaning one shrimp after another with practiced ease.

"It sounds like smoothing that complication out is the thing you should be focused on. Trust me."

Dean sighs, knowing he won't get any further, and leaves defeated. 

As he has for the past several days, he finds himself staring at the empty house as he parks on the street in front of Sam's, feeling helpless. His new phone rests on the dashboard, and he often finds himself staring at it, willing it to ring. Every time he gets a text he jumps to view it, only to be disappointed. He keeps going over that night in his head, cursing himself for all the things he failed to do correctly: for not letting Cas talk to him, for not waking Cas up, for not telling him exactly how he felt. He finds himself sleeping more than he should, greedy for the memories that don't belong to him if only so he can connect to Cas, to try and understand him, but too often the fragments he sees make him wake full of abject sorrow for all the loneliness he feels in them.

He'd give anything to have the chance to erase that loneliness forever.

A car pulls into the driveway of Cas's house, and Dean comes to attention, sitting up in his seat as he watches a woman get out of the car and go around to her trunk, pulling out a sign. She walks across the lawn, and as she places the stake into the grass and starts pushing it into the ground Dean sees that it's a "For Rent" sign. 

Before he can think about it he's out of the car and heading across the street, walking into the woman's line of sight before he gets too close to her so that he doesn't cause her alarm.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but I just happened to notice your sign. My brother Sam lives in that house right over there," he says, pointing, "and I'm actually looking for a place to live." Her suspicious look drops immediately into a welcoming smile, and she walks towards him with a hand out to shake.

"Well I'm Jody," she says pleasantly, "and I'd be happy to show you the place and give you the details if you like."

"That would be great, if you don't mind," he says as he releases her firm grip. He doesn't need to see it, but he knows it will be strange if he tells her that, so instead he tries to check himself as she takes him inside and on a tour of the house. It hurts even more than he anticipated seeing the empty bookshelves, the barren bedroom, and he tries to focus on what Jody is saying like a lifeline.

"The previous tenant left all the furnishings, so everything you see is included, as well as basic utilities like water, sewage, and A/C," she says, and he nods sagely as she quotes him the monthly cost for rent, but he doesn't care about the price at all. Whatever it is, he'll pay it. 

"Seems odd that the previous tenant left all this behind," he says as nonchalantly as possible, hands on his hips as he looks at the wall-mounted flat screen in the bedroom, but Jody just shrugs. "I know it seems sudden, but it's actually perfect for me, because I don't have any furnishings. I'm, uh, currently getting out of a living situation and staying with my brother and sister-in-law," he says, and her raised eyebrow tells him she completely gets his meaning. "So if you just tell me what you need as far as a deposit and references, I can get you those today."

She smiles and reaches out to shake his hand again. "Let's go downstairs and I'll grab a rental agreement out of the car. We can fill it out in the kitchen and get you situated. Long as everything checks out, you can probably move right in." He follows her down the stairs and into the living room, and as she goes out to the front door to her car he pauses, running his hand over the back of the sofa, remembering the last time he touched it.

An hour later he walks out with a receipt for his deposit and the phone number for Jody's office, although she assures him that she'll call him as soon as she confirms everything, and sure enough he finds himself there three hours later picking up the keys.

"I'll probably start moving in tomorrow, but uh, if I get some mail for the previous tenant, or find something there that I think he didn't mean to leave behind, would you know how to get it to him?" He sounds pathetically obvious to himself, and maybe Jody picks up on it, but he still thinks she's telling the truth when she says no. 

He makes a single stop before he heads right back to the house, parking in the driveway and letting himself into the kitchen through the garage door. He knows he'll need to go and buy a lot more stuff tomorrow, since he didn't take anything from Lisa's except his clothes and his few possessions, but right now he just wants to feel closer to Cas. He heads upstairs to the bedroom, toeing off his shoes and dropping the bag on the floor, crawling onto the mattress and lying on his back. 

He'd gone to sleep next to Cas in this very spot, feeling more at home here than he'd ever felt anywhere, waking up with a head full of possibilities and a heart full of more hope than he'd ever known. He'd wanted to crawl back into bed with him, wake him up with a kiss, wrap himself up in his skin and bask in it for hours. Why didn't he do that?

The answer is so simple and, in the light of recent revelations, so terribly tragic: he thought he'd have more time.

He rolls off the bed and over to the bag he left on the floor, pulling out the single pillow he bought and a set of bedsheets. Setting the pillow aside for the moment, he unzips the plastic packaging for the sheets, pulling them out of the sleeve and divesting them of the cardboard they're wrapped around. Navy sheets, a shade far darker than what he was looking for, but he'd rather any blue right now than none. Grabbing the fitted sheet, he ponders the bed for a moment, the placement of it in the corner striking him as odd again because it makes it difficult to put the sheets on. He pulls it out of the corner so that he can get around it, fitting himself between the bed and the wall to slide the elastic over the top corner. Something catches his eye behind the headboard, and he sidles back out towards the end of the bed, pulling the sheet into place over the bottom corners as he goes, and as he comes around to the last corner at the top he pulls the bed out a little further.

There, on the floor behind the headboard, is a folded piece of paper. 

He sits down on the floor hard, hand trembling as he reaches out to grab it, holding his breath as he opens it. 

_Cas,_

_I need a little time to think, so I've gone home to fetch some things._

He can't even read the rest, eyes blurred with the tears he's held at bay for a week now, and the note Castiel has obviously never seen falls from his hand back down to the floor.

*******

**__** _Sam: It's been two days. Call me._

_Sam: Dean. I know you're there because I saw your car in the goddamn driveway as I was leaving._

_Sam: Answer your phone or I'll play dirty._

_Sam: You leave me no choice._

_Jess: Are you fucking alive?_

_Jess: Blink if you understand me._

_Jess: I'm not above praying to my new best friend the archangel and asking him to invade your privacy and drag your ass into my presence_

_Jess: Dean whatever-the-fuck-your-middle-name-is-that-I-can't-remember-right-now Winchester so help me god I will come there as soon as my shift is over if you don't answer me and you won't like me when I'm angry._

Dean sighs as he reads the last message, knowing that if Jess actually shows up later he will be in real trouble, especially if she realizes that he's done nothing for two days except lie in bed in his boxer briefs. He hasn't bathed, he hasn't slept, he hasn't left the bed at all except to use the bathroom, and he fills his water glass from the sink and gets right back in the bed.

The only reason he hasn't turned off his phone, the reason he's kept it charged, is because he's still hoping that Cas will have a change of heart and reach out to him. 

He's crushed by the knowledge that Cas is out there somewhere, thinking Dean turned his back on him, that he doesn't want him, that he has to spend the rest of his time on Earth alone. It's been two days and he still hasn't figured out how to bear the guilt, especially when he dreams what he knows are snippets from Castiel's own life: always nomadic, always brief, always lonely. Two days and he wants to sink into despair and never come back out, and he wonders how Cas could bear it all these centuries. 

It's that thought that forces him into a sitting position, hanging his feet over the bed and putting his head in his hands.

_What am I doing?_

This has to stop. He has to _do_ something. He just doesn't know where to start, and he wonders how Cas ever managed to find purpose -- but then he realizes he knows the answer already. 

His brother helped him.

Dean feels like a fool.

He gets out of the bed and shuffles into the bathroom to take a shower, before realizing that he still doesn't have anything in the house: no towels, no soap, no toiletries. He'd stopped to buy sheets, and never got any further after he found the note behind the bed. 

Good thing Cas left behind a nearly full roll of toilet paper. 

He heads back into the bedroom and grabs his clothes off the floor, resolving to leave the house. He's going to get his shit together, take care of what he needs to, and figure out how to find Cas. 

Cas held onto hope for hundreds of years. Anything less from Dean would be unforgivable.

He heads to Sam's house first, glad that both he and Jess are at work and can't comment on Dean’s ragged appearance. He stands in front of the mirror after taking a long, hot shower, clearing a circle in the steam with his fist so he can shave, and doesn't recognize his own reflection: face drawn and gaunt, dark circles under his eyes. 

_What if Cas came back today? Is this how you'd want him to see you?_

He shakes his head and grabs his razor, the routine of shaving helping to ground him before he heads into the guest room to change into fresh clothes and gather up the things that he'd never even unpacked. Most of what he took from Lisa's house is still in the trunk of the Impala, never having made it over Sam's threshold. He empties all of it onto the floor of the garage and throws his duffel on top of it all to deal with later, then gets behind the wheel and backs out. 

He stops to get something to eat as he realizes he's starving, can't remember the last time he ate, and he decides to get milkshakes before heading over to the hospital to face the music with Jess. Maybe if he brings a peace offering she might not kill him outright with a single glance. 

It's as he gets into the elevator that he realizes what he's done. He has a vanilla milkshake in one hand for himself, and holds a carrier with four more in the other: strawberry for Jess, chocolate for Missouri and Ellen, and another vanilla he bought out of habit...for Cas. 

He never thought it would be such a terrible feeling to have an extra milkshake.

The elevator doors open and he drags himself into the corridor, each step heavier than the last as he approaches the station in the center of the floor. He can see Jess's blond head bent down over some papers, and he's able to reach over the desk and put the milkshake next to her before she notices him. 

"Dean," she sighs in relief, taking the cup as she gets up from her seat, coming around to the front to hug him. "I've been worried _sick_."

"I'm sorry," he breathes into her hair as he holds her tight. "I got lost for a little while."

She huffs and pounds him on the back a little with her fist before she pulls away, looking up at him fiercely. "Don't do it again."

He nods, abashed, and she steps away to go back behind the desk, taking the other milkshakes from him and placing them in front of Missouri and Ellen's chairs for them to enjoy when they complete their rounds. She looks at the last one before looking up at Dean, and he shuffles his feet.

"I, uh, didn't know who'd be taking his place and I thought maybe..." he trails off because he can tell she's not fooled, but she just sets the shake in front of the chair Cas used to sit in without comment. 

"You should call Sam," Jess says, interrupting his thoughts. "He's worried sick about you, Dean." He takes a sip of his milkshake, stalling.

He opens his mouth to answer but Ellen comes back, greeting him enthusiastically with a hug, thanking him for her treat. 

"I better get going," he says a few minutes later. "I still have to buy a bunch of stuff for the house. I'll come over tomorrow, I promise. I can't go back to work for two months, and I want to do everything I can to find Cas." 

“Have you tried praying to Gabriel again?” Jess asks, and he sighs.

“I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing when I’m awake, but he never answers. I can’t say I blame him.”

She nods as he turns and walks back towards the elevators. He's only about ten feet away when Missouri comes out of a room on his right.

"Dean Winchester," she says, standing in front of him with her arms crossed. "What are you doing here?" 

"Uh...I stopped to see Jess? I brought you a milkshake, Missouri, it's over at the..."

"No, young man, I mean what are you doing _here_? As in, why aren't you going after Castiel?"

He's taken aback, blinking at her stupidly while he tries to process the question.

"I don't...I don't know where to find him," he whispers, afraid of what she'll say, but she reaches out to pat his arm before placing a hand over his heart.

"Dear boy. You know that answer to that. Search your heart when you think of him, and you'll know exactly where to go." She reaches up to pat him on the cheek before she walks past him to continue down the corridor, and he stares after her for a moment before he continues to the elevator. 

Her words tumble around in the back of his mind for the rest of the day as he shops for necessities, takes them into the house, fills the fridge with groceries. He heads into the living room to the stereo Cas left behind, and notices for the first time that he left the iPod too, there on the dock from that night a week and a half ago, though it feels like so much longer now. He touches it to bring the screen to life, hitting play and letting soft music fill the room as walks to the bookcases and runs his fingertips across the wood. 

Nothing telegraphs Cas's absence more than those barren shelves, and he thinks of him packing away the contents they'd held as Dean lay unconscious and unaware in the hospital. He remembers asking Cas once if he carted these books with him everywhere, but he'd laughed and said no. How every time he starts over someplace new he amasses a collection: of books, of trinkets, of things Dean now knows ground him in the current time and place; yet when he leaves, he divests himself of them all like a snake shedding its skin. He’d said that it was too painful to hang on to things, because it made him look back at a life he’d had to leave behind. Dean supposed there was some merit to existing only in the present, though he didn't understand it at the time. Now he knows that Cas couldn't look back at a past with so much sorrow.

Dean is determined to ground himself here, though, in the recent past, until he can find a way back to Cas again. He reclines back onto the sofa, letting the music fill the room as he closes his eyes, thinking of that night, of the feeling of Cas in his arms. He lets the strings wash over him, understanding now what Cas meant about how they sound like weeping. They express all the things he cannot say, and he lets his mind drift as they play on.

_Breathing air into his human vessel for the first time, standing on new legs like a foal in the forest glade..._

_Trapped alone in a small cell, curled in a ball on the floor, full of hopeless despair..._

_Visiting his lover in dreams, dreams that are always in the same place, stormy cliffs overlooking the sea, so much green, lush green falling down into the ocean, waves crashing up against the rocks..._

_Falling fast and knowing for the first time there are no wings to catch the wind, to stop the fiery descent from grace..._

_The first moment he sees Fintan from a distance, his soul shining brighter than anything he'd ever seen, so bright he had to come closer, and knowing the moment his gaze fell upon that face that nothing would ever be the same..._

Dean opens his eyes and understands.

Gabriel is an angel, so to him creation is where the beginning lies, the creation of Castiel's vessel in a forest glade in Switzerland -- but Castiel hasn't thought like an angel for centuries. For him, it all began when he found his humanity in the love of a human soul, and suddenly Dean knows where to find him.

Gabriel said it himself, though he must not have realized it.

 _He fell in love with a human. That's where it began_.

*******

If you'd told Dean a month ago that he’d be on an international flight, headed to the Irish coast to find his fallen angel soulmate, he would have smiled at you while surreptitiously dialing 911 on his cell phone to summon help and get you into the nearest mental institution for an evaluation. Instead he's subjecting himself to half a day's flying in a metal tube of death, white knuckling the armrests whenever he's not throwing back another drink to calm his nerves. 

If he weren't so sure of himself, he wouldn't be doing this.

He'd rushed over to talk to Sam and Jess that night, telling them everything he knew about the place he thought he would find Cas. Eventually Sam had agreed, and helped him get his passport application expedited. Even that had taken three weeks, and he'd used that time to learn everything he could about the area where he'd be going, trying to pinpoint the most likely place to find Cas.

Every night, like a trusting child getting ready for bed, he got on his knees and prayed, although he knew there'd never be an answer.

When they finally land at Shannon Airport, Dean falls to his knees on the solid ground of the terminal and does it there, too.

_I pray to the fallen angel, Castiel: forgive me. I'm coming._

He checks into the airport hotel, dragging his duffel bag into the room. It's late at night here, and he passes out on the bed, the stress of the long flight and his jet lag conspiring to knock him out until morning. He wakes, disoriented and unsure before remembering where he is and why he's here, and then hurriedly showers. Changing into fresh clothes, he heads down to the front desk, intent on renting a car and getting directions to his destination. 

Nearby are the cliffs he's only ever seen in dreams, and Cas is here, somewhere. Dean is certain of it. 

*******

**__** _County Clare, Ireland, 2016_

It's early afternoon when Dean reaches the area he needs to be and finds a place to park. He looks around as he gets out, wondering the best place to start, when he spots a pub across the street. It's probably a good place to ask around, so he heads there first. 

The pub only has a few customers at this hour, and the bartender is more occupied with wiping down the bar than he is with serving drinks at the moment. Dean heads up and takes a seat, fidgeting as he waits for the bearded man to notice him.

"What can I get you?" 

Dean looks up at him, at the kind smile in his dark beard, the pleasant expression in his bright blue eyes. Not the blue he's looking for, but something about them gives Dean hope. 

"Actually, I was wondering if you could help me?" Dean says, opening up his phone. 

"American?" the man asks, and he nods.

"Dean Winchester," he says, holding out his hand in greeting, and the man takes it but doesn't give a name in return. "I'm looking for my friend, and I think he's in this area but I'm not sure where." He brings up a picture of Cas that he'd taken once while they were at the diner, as he teased him about the quizzical expression on his face. He hates that it's the only picture he has, but something about it is so _Cas_ that it feels apt to show it to people as he looks for him. "It's urgent that I find him. Have you seen anyone around that looks like this?" He doesn't even try to keep the pleading tone out of his voice as the bartender studies the picture before handing the phone back to Dean.

"I don't remember his name, but there's a guy that looks just like that who’s been coming in here lately. Doing ancestral research here, I think he said."

"Do you know where he's staying?" Dean asks frantically. He'll case this place all day every day if he has to, but he wants to find Cas sooner rather than later.

"Well, I'm not positive exactly, but I know Mrs. O'Leary rented her hillside cottage out to someone a while back, so it's more than likely that's where your friend is staying. Is he in trouble?" He speaks teasingly, but his eyes are serious, glaring at Dean with a fierce protectiveness that actually frightens him a little as he he shakes his head. 

"No, nothing like that. I just want to find him. I need to." The man gives him an assessing look for a minute, then glances away like he's debating the merits of giving information to a total stranger. "Please help me," Dean begs, not caring how it sounds. "I've been looking for him for weeks. I have to tell him some things. Some things he needs to know. Please." 

The bartender stares at him in a way that reminds him of Gabriel, the intense stare that seems like he's reading into Dean's soul, before nodding to himself and giving him directions. 

"Look for him in the churchyard along the way first. He told me he spends a lot of time there." Dean nods, blurting out his thanks as he rushes out.

It takes Dean twenty minutes at a jog to see the old church in the distance, and another ten to arrive there. It's midway up a large hill with nothing but an old path hidden in the long grass leading the way to its crumbling facade. He works his way around to the ancient graveyard at the back, not seeing Cas at all but walking up and down rows of ancient stone to be sure. 

Nothing. Dean looks around frantically to get his bearings, trying to spot the path back out of the churchyard that will lead to the cottage when something in the distance catches his eye. 

A lone dark-haired figure, standing at the very top of the cliffs, gazing out at the sea.

_Cas._

He runs as much as he can, the rocky terrain more treacherous to navigate as he makes his way towards the cliff top, but somehow he traverses it as nimbly as if he were born to it, and as he reaches the crest he moves swiftly along the edge. 

"Cas!" he calls out, the wind tearing the word from his lips and flinging it out to sea, but he's undeterred and tries again as he gets closer. "Cas!"

He's only feet away now as the figure turns, and there's shock in his eyes as Dean moves towards him. The wind is whipping his dark hair where he stands in a thick cable knit sweater, holding his elbows against the chill, real and whole in the place of Dean's dreams, the place where it all began.

"Dean," he whispers, a sound that would be lost in the crash of the sea except that Dean already has his face in his hands as he kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find reference pictures for this chapter here:  
> [Chapter 14 Reference](http://zaphodsgirl.tumblr.com/post/166123868982/sadly-ive-never-actually-been-to-ireland-though)


	15. Apologies

“Maybe she will save me in the oceans of her dream. And maybe, someday, love.” -- _Love Song Requiem_ , Trading Yesterday

***

Cas wraps his arms around Dean's waist, feeling the warmth of him here, in this place, and it's surreal enough to be a dream except that he can feel the beat of Dean's heart. He's elated and confused and full of questions, but first he lets himself be kissed again on the cliffs as the waves beat against the rocks below.

Dean pulls away enough to rest their foreheads together for a moment, then pulls back to look at Cas, stroking his cheekbones with his thumbs as he cradles his face. 

"Dean..." he starts, but the words catch in his throat. "I don't understand," he finally manages, and Dean smiles sadly. 

"You shouldn't have left, Cas. I was coming back. I left you a note, but..." he pulls a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, "since I found it behind your bed I guess you've never read it." He holds it out and Cas takes it with shaking hands. 

_Cas,_

_I need a little time to think, so I've gone home to fetch some things._

_I don't know how long I'll be gone, but I will be back._

_I want to hear whatever you have to say._

_There are so many things I need to say to you in return._

_Dean_

Tears spring to his eyes as he reads it, and he presses his lips to the writing as if he's asking its forgiveness. 

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice hoarse with apology and regret. "I thought..." Dean moves in close again, reaching up to brush his cheek before kissing him again, softly. 

"It doesn't matter, Cas. I'm here now. I will _always_ be here." Cas pulls back to look at him, brow furrowed with confusion.

"How _are_ you here?" Dean clears his throat, looking out at the sea.

"This is where it all began for you, isn't it? When you were...Cassiel." 

"How did you..." but Dean takes his hand and starts walking down the hill, tugging at him to follow.

"We have a lot to talk about, and I don't want to have to shout. The bartender at the pub told me you're renting the cottage nearby?"

"Chuck?" 

"Blue-eyed guy with a beard?" Dean clarifies with a smile, and Cas nods. "Yeah, that's the one. Come on."

His mind is reeling as he follows Dean down the hillside and into the fields of long grass undulating in the wind, and they don't speak again as they make their way to the cottage. Dean pulls up short as it comes into view, and Cas hears his gasp even over the rustling of the wind. 

"What is it?" he asks, and Dean shakes his head slightly before picking up his feet again.

"Nothing. Just...deja vu." 

Cas walks ahead of him, pushing open the heavy wooden door and leading him inside. For all the quaint country styling of the exterior, the inside looks quite modern. It's one large open space, with a kitchen area and a breakfast nook on the left and a large bed over to the right, a small door just beyond it. The far side of the room has a fireplace that is burning lowly, embers glowing on its hearth, and a large sofa that's buried in pillows and a quilt. Dean closes the door behind him as Cas goes over to bank the fire, and he pulls off his jacket before he makes himself comfortable on the couch. Cas looks over his shoulder from where he kneels before the hearth, marvelling at how Dean can be here, in this cottage, at the edge of the Ireland.

"Am I dreaming?" he asks softly, and Dean shakes his head slowly.

"No, Cas. But I have been. Dreaming, I mean, and I see such strange things in them. I see _you_ , Cas. Or rather, I see your _memories_." Cas moves to sit next him, and Dean takes his hand, pulling him closer. "What you did, Cas, when you..." he takes a deep breath, "when you _saved_ me, you gave me more than my life. You gave me yours, too, didn't you?"

"Dean, how do you _know_ all this?" Dean looks at their entwined hands for a moment, before he looks him in the eye and says something completely unexpected.

"I spoke to Gabriel."

_"Gabriel?"_

"He's quite a character," Dean says. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around that whole thing."

"How much do you know?" Cas asks, and Dean looks into the fire, considering.

"I see snippets of your past, but I don't have context for most of it. Sam was in the bathroom the night you..." he looks back at Cas, gripping his hand tightly. "He overheard everything but didn't know what to make of it. When he said Gabriel's name I connected it to a memory of him appearing after you prayed. So I tried it. Jess handled his appearance very smoothly. Sam, not so much." Dean leans into Cas, resting his forehead on his shoulder. "He told us what happened to you because of it. Because of _me_."

"Dean..."

"I'm so _sorry_ , Cas. I don't know all of it but the part he told us is _awful_ and you lost so _much_ and you tried to tell me and I..."

"Dean, it's _not_ your fault," Cas says firmly, turning to face him now, dislodging him from his shoulder. "Is that why you're here?" he asks quietly, as if he dreads the answer. "Out of...guilt?"

Dean looks shocked for a moment, then sad, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together between them as he gazes into the fire.

"I realize I didn't communicate to you very well the night we... _that_ night," he says lowly. "I was so _nervous_ , and there were so many things I'd wanted to say to you for so long, and I didn't say any of them. Then, when you tried to tell me the truth about yourself I..."

"Don't. Your reaction was perfectly valid. I know how it sounded, what I was trying to say."

"That doesn't matter. I should have listened. I should have stayed in the morning."

"And maybe I shouldn't have left as I did. We could exhaust the entire afternoon fighting over who to assign blame to."

"You're right," Dean sighs, rubbing his face with his hands. "I'm not here out of guilt. Please don't think that's it. That morning, I just wanted to get some space to clear my head, listen to everything you had to say. I never thought...I never thought _any_ of the things that occurred after would happen." He tells Cas of the events of that fateful morning, realizing his phone had died, getting to the fire call. Waking up in the hospital, not knowing where he'd gone.

"I dreamed of you while I was unconscious, but you weren't _you_ , exactly. You were just a flickering ball of light hovering near me, and in my dream we were here, on the cliffs. And after a while I heard your voice whispering something, and then you grew so bright it encompassed everything. I think that's when you..." he turns his head to look at Cas, who nods in understanding. "I heard your voice then, but I couldn't move. You and Gabriel shouting at each other. By the time I managed to open my eyes, you were gone." He stands up, walking to stand before the fire, leaning one arm against the mantle as he stares into the flames, and when he speaks again his voice is thick with sorrow. "Why did you do that, Cas?"

The room is silent for a while, only the sound of the fire and the wind outside, until Cas gets up and goes to stand by Dean, putting an arm around him.

"When I woke up alone, I was confused. I didn't see your note, I didn't have any texts, and you didn't answer mine. I thought the worst. I just couldn't face it, didn't want to face the _thought_ of it, so...I ran." 

"No, Cas," Dean says as he turns to take Cas by the shoulders. "Why did sacrifice your grace to _heal_ me?" 

Cas brings his hands up, holding on to Dean's wrists as he looks him in the eye.

"Because I love you, Dean." 

"But you'll _die_." 

"Eventually, yes. Just like you will." 

"And then what?" 

"Then you'll go to Heaven, again, I'm sure."

"And you?" Dean asks, shaking him a little, but Cas looks away and he knows Dean understands when he pulls Cas to him tightly and buries his face in his neck. "I finally found you," he whispers in a voice thick with unshed tears. "I don't want to lose you ever again." 

"I'm sorry, Dean. This life is all I have left to give you, but it's _yours_ , if you still want it," he whispers into his hair, and Dean pulls away to take his face in his hands, leaning their foreheads together.

"Then this will be the best of them," he says before he captures Cas's lips in his again, kissing him as passionately as he had at the cliffs. "And when the time comes for me to go wherever I go, you'll be with me, somehow. Part of you will _always_ be with me, for however long eternity is for me." He cups Cas's face with one hand, brushing over his bottom lip with his thumb. "I love you, Cas." 

The room seems to glow around them as those words fill Castiel, and he kisses Dean again fiercely, feeling complete in a way he hasn't for hundreds of years.

*******

Dean returns Cas's kiss with equal fervor, grasping him by the hips before running his hands up under his sweater, pulling at the t-shirt underneath until he can place his hands on bare skin. Cas responds by running his hands down Dean's back, teasing at the waistband of his jeans before clasping his ass, pulling their hips together as he pulls Dean’s bottom lip through his teeth. Dean takes that as an invitation to plunder Cas's mouth with his tongue, and it's not long before they're both gasping for breath, rubbing their growing erections together. 

"Bed," Cas growls, and that guttural sound makes Dean’s every nerve ending come to attention and burn. He takes Dean's hand and guides him over to the bed, pausing beside it to pull off his heavy sweater and t-shirt together, dropping them to the floor without another glance as he reaches out to pull Dean's own sweater over his head. He gasps when he sees his own handprint on Dean's left arm, and as he reaches out to touch it Dean covers it with his own hand.

"It doesn't hurt," he says. 

"I'm still sorry," Cas says, pulling Dean's hand away gently, then tracing the outline of it with his fingers. "I didn't know that would happen." 

Dean reaches up to cup his chin, leaning up to brush their lips together. "I imagine that a mark like this only comes with great sacrifice. You sacrificed your own grace to save my life, Cas. It belongs to you now, with my heart." He leans in to run his lips along the shell of Cas's ear as he whispers. "My body, too."

Cas pulls back to stroke Dean's chest and abs lightly, blue eyes dark with hunger as he circles a nipple with the pad of his thumb, watching Dean's face as it hardens and he gasps at the sensation. 

"Cas," he whispers, reaching out to cup his face again, and Cas leans into the touch briefly before he focuses on unfastening the button of Dean's jeans. He unzips them and slides his hands over Dean's ass to let them drop to the floor, before kneeling down at his feet to unlace his boots and help him to step out of everything. He looks up at Dean, then, his hands tracing up the back of his calves and thighs as he stands, placing them on Dean's hips as he turns him to sit on the bed. Dean looks up at Cas standing shirtless between his knees, and he traces a finger down the dark trail of hair that disappears beneath the waistband of his jeans. He tucks a finger under it, tracing the skin there before he unbuttons them slowly, tugging the material at his hips to let them fall, and Cas steps out of them and his shoes as he pushes against Dean's shoulder to get him to lie back on the bed as he follows.

Cas hovers over him for a moment, staring down at him before leaning in to kiss him gently again.

"I got overwhelmed last time," he whispers. "I'd wanted you for so long that when you finally kissed me I couldn't think, I just _reacted._ " Dean nods, hands coming up to run his knuckles lightly over Cas's ribs. "I won't make that mistake this time, Dean. I'm going to take you apart, slowly, and worship every inch of you." 

"What about you?" Dean says lowly. "That's what I want, too." Cas smiles wickedly before he leans down to whisper in Dean's ear.

"I've been waiting longer, so I go first." Dean's whole body shudders beneath him, and Cas suckles on an earlobe, making Dean gasp. Cas lowers his hips and rolls into him as Dean grabs at his ass, pressing them together even harder.

"Whatever you want, Cas," Dean whispers hoarsely. "I just want you." He feels Cas sucking a mark into his neck, but then he stops suddenly and pulls away. 

"I'm sorry, I...I forgot," he says, and Dean looks at him for a moment, confused. "I forgot you don't...like that."

"Why would you think that?" Dean asks, cupping his face when Cas tries to look away, searching his memory for the answer. "Oh. _Oh_. No, that's not..." he rolls Cas off him, turning them so they're facing one another, still cupping his cheek. "Listen to me, okay? That night, I hadn't intended...I just came over to talk, to tell you how I felt about you, to let you know that Lisa and I weren't together anymore because we both want other things." He runs a hand through Cas's unruly hair. "We just hadn't told Ben yet, and I didn't want him to see and ask weird questions, that's all." Cas closes his eyes and exhales before leaning into Dean, nuzzling into his neck again.

"I thought you were experimenting with me and didn't want anyone to know," Cas confesses, and Dean's heart breaks a little. 

"There are a lot of things we need to talk about."

Cas stares into Dean's eyes, gripping his hip tightly, pulling Dean's pelvis flush against him.

"Dean." 

"Yeah, Cas," he gasps as he's rolled onto his back again, their cocks brushing together through the fabric of their boxes.

"Can we talk about regrets later? It's keeping me from doing something _very_ important." Dean just nods enthusiastically as Cas moves to suck his left nipple, thumbing the right one to attention. He rakes his teeth lightly down the skin of Dean's ribs as he moves down his body, pulling down the waistband of his briefs just enough to suck on his hipbones. Dean feels alive with anticipation, every bit of skin touched by Cas humming like a finely tuned instrument, and he groans as Cas mouths his full erection through his boxers before pulling that last bit of clothing off his legs and tossing them away. 

Cas sits on his haunches at the foot of the bed, his gaze along Dean's entire naked form hot and nearly tangible. Dean teases him a bit, spreading his legs slightly and then running his own hands along the inside of his thighs and up his torso and chest before reaching up to clutch either side of the pillow, his eyes telegraphing an invitation for Cas to reach out and touch. Any lingering insecurities he may have felt are burned away by the fire in Cas's eyes as he leans down to kiss the inside of Dean's knee and run his lips up the inside of his thigh as he spreads his legs further apart. 

Dean can feel Cas's breath on his rigid cock, and he holds his breath as Cas licks a wet stripe from base to tip, suckling at the head before he swirls his tongue around it. Dean clutches the pillowcase in his fists, fighting the desire to buck up into Cas's mouth as he slowly takes Dean in, the head of his cock hitting the back of Cas's throat before he pulls off again to the very tip and then does it all again. And again. Over and over, tortuously slow, finally managing to relax his throat and take Dean in completely to the root.

"Cas," Dean groans breathlessly, throwing his head back as Cas continues to fellate him so slowly he might die before he comes. "Cas, please," he practically whimpers, not even sure what he's begging for, and Cas pulls off, shifting his weight on the bed as he fumbles for something in the nightstand before pulling out a bottle of lube. Dean tenses up without meaning to, but Cas notices the tightening of his abdomen and looks up at him as he traces a finger up and down Dean's cock. 

"Would you rather I didn't..." 

"No, no, I want you to, it's just...I've never done this before." 

"Oh, Dean," Cas says, shaking his head. "I never thought about it. I'm so sorry. This is too fast, we don't have to..." 

"Castiel," Dean says firmly, and Cas stops talking as Dean pulls him up to his chest, wrapping his arms around him as he devours his mouth again, tasting the salt of his own pre-come on his lips. "Don't you _dare_. I want this, I want _you_ , and I don't want to wait anymore for _anything_." He reaches down to wrap a hand around Cas's own neglected cock, and it throbs hot in his fist as Cas's hips buck at the sensation. Dean leans over to suck at Cas's neck before he growls in his ear. "I want this inside me." 

"On your stomach," Cas says breathlessly, and Dean rolls away from him to oblige, the friction of the sheets against his own hard cock almost too much to bear. "I want to look at your face, but it will be easier like this the first time." Cas runs a hand reverently down Dean's spine and over the globes of his ass before Dean hears the click of the bottle opening. He tenses again in anticipation as Cas parts his cheeks, and then he can feel the tip of a lubed finger circling the furled muscle of his entrance. 

It's strangely pleasant, and Dean soon relaxes under Cas's touch, his hips thrusting shallowly into the mattress to feel the pressure against his cock. He gasps at the sensation of that finger breaching him slowly, and soon enough Cas is moving the finger in and out, all the way in to the last knuckle before pulling out just to do it again. It feels a little strange but Dean wants more of it, and as he starts to buck back slightly he feels Cas working another lubed finger into him beside the first one as he buries his face in the pillow.

"Are you okay, Dean? Do you want me to stop?" Cas asks softly, rubbing his hand along Dean's back, but Dean shakes his head.

"No, feels so _good_ , Cas, I never, I didn't know it felt like this," he says huskily, and he hears Cas chuckle lowly as he thrusts his fingers a little faster. Dean is panting hard by the time Cas decides he's ready for a third finger, and it burns a little as it goes in but Dean doesn't stop moving his hips back against Cas's hand. The fingers move differently now, searching for something, and as Cas finds that little bundle of nerves inside him and presses against it Dean sees stars.

"Cas!" he shouts, thrusting his hips hard into the mattress and then back onto those fingers, his nerves on fire. Suddenly Cas pulls his hand away and Dean whimpers. "Please, Cas, don't stop," he pants, "I _need_ you." 

"I know, beloved," Cas soothes, and he feels the weight of him shift in between his legs, positioning himself at his entrance, and Dean gasps and clutches the sheets as he feels the head of Cas's cock breaching him. Cas stops, holding Dean still with a hand on his hip while he gives him a few minutes to adjust. 

Dean can't help but whimper as Cas takes an interminable amount of time sinking himself into Dean, little by little: first pushing in by degrees and then pulling almost completely again, before moving back in just a little further than before, over and over again until finally he's buried in Dean's ass up to the hilt. He blankets Dean's body with his own, interlacing their fingers where he's clutching the sheets, mouthing at the back of his neck as he rolls his hips, fucking into him shallowly.

Dean is out of his mind with sensation, the feeling of Cas's weight on top of him, filling him up and stroking against his most intimate place. He has never known such worship, and he grips Cas's fingers tightly as he makes longer and longer thrusts, pulling out nearly all the way before plunging back into Dean's heat, slowly but firmly. 

"Please, I need more, Cas, please," he finally manages, and Cas moves back, pulling Dean up to his hands and knees as he starts to fuck into him in earnest, Dean's cock hanging hard and heavy between them. Cas reaches around to take Dean into his fist, pumping him in time with his thrusts, and as Cas hits his sweet spot again Dean screams and comes all over the sheets beneath him, Cas following not long after he feels Dean clenching around him with orgasm.

*******

Cas watches the light from the fireplace flickering over Dean's skin in the growing darkness, and sends out a silent prayer to someone long-absent that he hasn't spoken to in a long time. 

_Thank you, Father, for giving me this blessed gift._

He doesn't know if his Father even listens to prayers anymore, but he feels overwhelmed with gratitude, and the need to direct it somewhere. He curls up more closely behind Dean as he sleeps, peering over his shoulder to watch the way the light plays across his face before he feels him shift and his eyes flutter open. Cas moves away slightly as Dean rolls onto his back and smiles up at him, raising his head for a kiss. 

"I'm sorry I dozed off," he says. "I feel like I'm always falling asleep on you." Cas leans his head on one hand as he traces Dean's lips with the other before he wraps that arm around his waist.

"It's okay. I like watching you sleep."

"Did you watch me sleep last time?" Dean asks, teasingly, and Cas lowers his head in embarrassment. "Hey, it's alright. I don't mind." 

"It's just...it's so different this time."

"How's that?"

Cas rolls onto his back, putting his hands behind his head as he stares at the ceiling, and Dean turns onto his side, tucking an arm under his head.

"That first night we were together, I watched you sleep and wondered how I'd ever make it work between us."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't know how I would ever be able to tell you the truth about me, about us. I wanted so much to tell you about my life, tell you anything real about me in a way that you would believe, but I couldn't figure out how, thus my bumbling attempts to confess the truth to you." He rubs a hand down his face before resting it on his stomach, and Dean covers it with his own. "I'd only ever thought about how much I wanted you, and never about how it impractical it would be. How would I explain to you why I didn't age or grow old? I had always thought that when I finally found you I would..." he trails off, not knowing if he should tell Dean what he thought.

"You would what, Cas?"

"It doesn't matter." 

"Cas." Dean moves to press himself against Cas's side, an arm thrown over his waist while he props his chin against his other hand. "There's something you're not telling me. I think we're past the point of having secrets, don't you?"

"I don't want to upset you, Dean."

"I know. But I'd rather you do it and then help me get past it than keep me in the dark anymore." Cas looks at his earnest face, tracing his jaw with a fingertip.

"Before Gabe cast me out of Heaven, he told me there was still hope for me to get what I wanted. That if I found the soul of my beloved on Earth, if our connection was true," he leans up to kiss Dean softly on the lips, "my grace could be transformed into a human soul."

Dean gives him a searching look as he considers, then puts his head down on Cas's chest.

"It didn't work because of me, right? Because I didn't know what I was feeling, or what I wanted. Because I didn't tell you I loved you before..." Cas holds him tightly, pressing a kiss into his hair. 

"There's no way to know if what Gabe thought was even true. It's highly unlikely. Such an act...it would have been a _miracle_ , Dean, a true one. To have affected such a change on me purposefully would have taken the entire council of archangels working together to complete the task; to think it would just happen spontaneously once we met was never more than a fantasy. I finally have you with me, here, now, and that's more than I ever dreamed of. All I want is to spend all the time with you I can, building a life together."

"Then that's what we'll do," Dean whispers, pressing a kiss into his heart. "I want you to tell me all the stories of your life, Cas, all the places you've ever been." He props his head on his hand again, tracing a finger along Cas's ribs. "What made you come back to this place when you left?" he finally asks, looking up at Cas curiously. "I would have thought you'd want to go as far away from all these memories as possible."

Cas turns on his side so they're facing one another.

"Actually, I've always avoided this place, ever since I fell. It was...too painful to be here, even though for a long time I wondered if maybe this was where I'd eventually find you."

"Well, that kind of came to pass, didn't it?" Dean smiles, and Cas can't help but laugh.

"Yes, you're right. I decided to come back to learn as much as I could about what happened to Fintan after...after I didn't come back. See if I could trace his family, find out if there were any left. Just something I felt was long overdue." 

"I know what happened...after," Dean says. Cas looks at him curiously, and he clears his throat. "Gabe let me see _myself_ , back when we first met. I saw Fintan's whole life, and then his afterlife, up until I was born. It's what helped me figure out where you were. I don't know if it will help you to hear it, but I'll tell you if you like."

Cas rolls onto his back again, rubbing his face with his hands. 

"I want to hear it, even so. I think I need to. Would you share it with me?" 

Dean looks at him for a moment, then nods. 

"There's just one condition." He turns onto his back again and pulls Cas towards him, tucking him into the crook of his arm until he's curled up against his chest. "Afterwards, you tell me everything about you."

Cas nods as much as he can, lying against Dean's chest with a hand over his heart, feeling it beat beneath his palm alive and strong while Dean tells him the story of his soul.


	16. Aftermath

“There's a light, there's a sun taking all the shattered ones to the place we belong, and his love will conquer all.” - _Shattered_ , Trading Yesterday

***

By the time Dean finishes talking the fire has burned down to embers, glowing coals on the far side of the room that hide the tear tracks on Cas's face even though he can feel their evidence on his skin. He runs a soothing hand through Cas's hair, down the cool skin of his back and up again, long strokes of his palm rubbing warmth into his spine.

Cas rolls away without speaking, rising from the bed and walking over to the fireplace to stoke the coals and feed the fire, and Dean props himself on an elbow to watch him, naked form bathed in the increasing firelight. 

"Are you okay?" he asks lowly, and Cas looks over his shoulder from where he kneels before the fire. "Should I not have told you?" Cas doesn't answer, looking back into the fire as he leans an arm on his raised knee, and Dean can't help but marvel at the beauty of him even in sorrowful contemplation. He sits up and swings his legs off the bed, walking over to sit on the rug before the fire, leaning back on his hands as he studies Cas's profile. 

"I never imagined that he spent the rest of his life alone, waiting," Cas whispers. "All the while I was imprisoned, I imagined him on Earth hating me for breaking my promise, and then just moving on. It's part of why I came here, to see if I could figure out what happened to him. I thought it would help me figure out why," he looks at Dean, "why you didn't want me."

"Cas."

"I know," he says, sitting back on the carpet, facing Dean and mirroring his posture, stretching his legs out beside him and rubbing one of his calves idly as he looks back into the flames. "At the time I just needed some kind of closure, and I thought that maybe I would find it here. To know that Fintan married and had a dozen bonny children before he died, and his soul didn't remember me because he'd moved on in life. I guess I hoped it would make it less painful."

"What _did_ you find?" Dean asks curiously, and Cas considers for a moment before looking at him. 

"Not much, really. Let's eat something and I'll tell you. You distracted me from my lunch and I'm _starving_ ," he says wryly, and Dean smiles as Cas smacks him lightly on the calf before he stands and puts out a hand to help Dean up as well. 

"You're going to have to eat a lot more from now on," Cas says, running a hand down his ribs as Dean's dick twitches with interest. Cas smirks as he goes over to the bed and liberates their boxers from the piles of clothes there, handing Dean's to him as he steps into his own. Dean's sorry to see him in any clothing, but it's for the best since it's chilly away from the fire. He sits at the little table while Cas makes them huge sandwiches, watching the play of muscles under his skin as he reaches for things, and Dean thinks that there's one hunger in him that will never be sated as long as he lives. 

Cas brings them each a can of Guinness with their sandwiches, and Dean can't help but grin as he eats. Cas looks thoughtful as he chews and swallows. 

"Gabriel never told me that he went to Fintan's Heaven, that that's where he got the idea for..." he gestures vaguely to himself as he trails off. "I have more to thank him for than I knew." 

"Yeah, well, I think _I_ should be the one thanking him for that," Dean says, wiggling his eyebrows until Cas chuckles, sipping at his beer and shaking his head before getting serious again.

"What you told me about Fintan, it...it makes sense now why I couldn't find anything about him at all. It's very difficult to access records that old, but there are ways to figure out what you want to know. I could only seem to find evidence of his sister's children."

"Graine."

"Yes. Fintan had arranged a good match for her when he asked if I could..." Cas trails off, remembering. "I'd never anticipated that my brothers would act as they did. I thought that the worst they could do was refuse my request, and if that happened I would find another way for us to be together, take over a dying human vessel, something." He looks at Dean, eyes filled with a sadness centuries old, and Dean reaches across the table to take his hand. "I wanted to dance at her wedding." 

Dean squeezes his hand and Cas takes a deep breath before he continues.

"She named her only daughter Una, after the Queen of the Fae."

"Fintan suggested it to her." 

"I wondered, actually. I'd always felt terrible for letting Fintan believe I was one of them."

"You couldn't have told him anything he would have believed, Cas." 

"Yes," Cas says on a sigh. "I was thinking the same thing about you."

"Are you sorry?" Dean asks. "That all this happened? That I know everything, given the cost?"

"No! Of course not! Are...are you?" 

Dean looks down at their clasped hands, rubbing his thumb over Cas's. 

"I'm not sorry that I know the truth, especially when it brought me to you, but...I regret. Not figuring things out sooner, not staying where I was that morning, not waking you up before I left..."

"Oh, Dean." Cas stands up from the table and moves to wrap his arms around Dean where he sits, placing a kiss into his hair. "Please don't, beloved. It doesn't matter now."

"I know," Dean whispers as he looks up at Cas, who traces the shape of his face as he looks into his eyes, that shade of green that captured an angel and changed the course of its future forever. "Tell me everything that happened to you, Cas. I think I need to hear it. Then we'll put all of this behind us, and look to the future."

"Let's get dressed and take a walk, then," Cas says pulling away with a kiss to Dean's forehead. "I'll show you where it all began."

Dean closes his eyes, sending out a silent message.

_I pray to the angel, Gabriel. I've found Castiel, and I promise to care for him for the rest of my days on Earth._

*******

Gabriel stands atop the windswept cliff, listening to the roar of the sea as he watches the scene before him. As an archangel he was privy to the greater workings of Heaven, more aware than most of all the tiny machinations turning and turning like gears and cogs behind the face of the world. 

None of that knowledge has prepared him for the scene spread out before him, because he's seen it somewhere else before.

It's not just the sound of the waves, or the wind whipping the grass like a second sea, or even the lookalike cottage partway down the hillside. It's the two figures in the distance, walking hand and hand through the field with their heads close together, one dark and one light, just as he remembers from his sojourn into Fintan's Heaven.

He expected, when he noticed them, to see something else that reminded him of that day: a single human soul with an empty vessel standing next to it. 

Instead the archangel Gabriel, Herald of the Lord, stands in complete of awe of something that cannot be explained.

 _Two_ human souls. 

He reaches up to brush at his face, and his fingers come away wet. 

"Hello, Gabriel," a voice says from behind him, and he turns to see a man with dark hair and a beard, looking at him with calm, pale blue eyes. It's not a face he recognizes, but he knows it just the same.

"Father," he whispers, and the man nods, stepping up next to him to look at the two figures below. 

"It's been a long time," he says. "It seems I have missed a few things."

"Is this your doing?" Gabe asks, gesturing to the men below them.

"No," says God. "I had no hand in this." 

"But...but how is it possible?" Gabe asks. "It would have to be..."

"A miracle. A _true_ one. Not just the work of angels that humans call miracles because they don't understand."

"But if you didn't, then how?"

God smiles to himself as Dean pulls Cas to him, cradling his face in his hands as he kisses him reverently.

"Do you know why I left Heaven?" he asks, and Gabe shakes his head. "I watched how my human creations flourished on Earth, the ways they learned to adapt and create and grow, and I wanted that for _all_ my children. I thought, if I left, all of you would learn to do the same. Would feel free, the way humans do." He turns to face Gabe, smiling sadly. "I'm not surprised that Cassiel was the first. He was always so well-attuned to humanity, so curious about them, though he tried not to show it." He looks down at his feet before watching the figures in the distance again. "What _does_ surprise me is how he was treated. It never occurred to me that there would be such resistance to change."

"So he was right, after all. He _is_ exactly how you made him."

"Yes."

"Resistance hardly seems an apt description for what happened," Gabriel spits.

"Given your role in it, perhaps you should watch your tone with me," God replies lightly, with no real heat in his voice, but Gabe is ashamed and looks away.

"What finally brought you back?" he asks curiously after a beat, unable to help himself. "Was it this?" 

God chuckles a little before turning away from the scene before him and walking along the cliff, Gabriel falling in step beside him.

"No, actually. I felt something a few weeks ago that...intrigued me."

"What, like a disturbance in the force?" Gabe says before he can help himself, but God actually smiles. 

"I suppose you could say that, young Padawan. I felt your brother sacrifice what was left of his own grace to save a single soul. That's something that's never happened in all of history."

"Is that how..." Gabe starts to ask, but stops walking to stare at his brother in the distance. "No, it can't be. I came to him as soon as it happened, and he had no soul then."

"You should give yourself more credit, Gabriel. You were right all along about how your brother could obtain a soul of his own."

"But...but his grace was _gone_. There was nothing left in him to _transform_." 

"Not in him, no." God agrees, following Gabe's gaze into the distance. "Did you know that I did not invent love? It was not part of my original design, but something that happened all on its own, like..." 

"Like a mutation?" 

"You always did have a way with a turn of phrase, Gabriel, but yes, I suppose that's true. A by-product of the human spirit that even I don't fully understand, though I've been watching for thousands of years." He turns away from the scene before them, walking to edge of the cliffs instead. "Love is like this ocean at times, vast and tumultuous, capable of wreaking havoc with a single storm. Other times it envelops you with its tranquility, keeps you afloat, caresses you. In its bosom nothing is ever truly lost, and some things make their way back to the shore."

"I don't understand."

"Cassiel gave his love to a human a long time ago, and was loved in return," God says, turning to Gabriel. "A piece of him would always be within that soul, waiting to be found again, for the ones we love never truly leave us." He turns to face the figures in the distance again. "You should be the one to give them the news, I think. It will be the atonement you've searched for these many years." 

"What about you?" Gabe whispers finally, overwhelmed.

"Oh, I think it's time I return to Heaven. I think a lecture is in order, maybe a changing of the guard. I think you should stay here, keep watch over them," he says, nodding in the direction of the cottage. "And then, someday, when the time comes, you can escort Castiel to his eternal Heaven. Then you should come and help me with the rest of your brethren." He brushes a tear from Gabriel's face before patting him on the shoulder. "There is much you could teach them, I think." 

In the blink of an eye, Gabriel is alone on the cliff again. He wipes his face and straightens his shoulders before he heads down the hill into the long grass to give Castiel the gift of eternity with Dean, as the sun takes its last gasp against the horizon.


End file.
